Biohacking Sleep

GET YOUR ZZZs

We all know how important adequate sleep can be, and how detrimental it can be to get a lack of it, especially for the recovery process, but also implicated in a host of chronic issues from mental fatigue, obesity and diabetes to immune dysfunction and cancer. In addition to triggering your circadian rhythm by getting natural light exposure during the day, (which leads to the formation of the feel good hormone serotonin, the precursor of the sleep hormone, melatonin) it turns out exposure to artificial blue light, especially in the evening, has a major effect on how you sleep.

According to Authority Nutrition:
“It turns out that perhaps the single biggest contributor to our collective sleep problems is the use of artificial lighting and electronics at night. These devices emit light of a blue wavelength, which tricks our brains into thinking that it is daytime.”

This wave length of light emitted by our phones, tablets, computer monitors and TVs actually inhibits the body’s ability to manufacture melatonin and thus can disrupt restorative sleep. This blue light can also induce photoreceptor damage to your eyes which is one of the main reasons we are seeing a market demand for and built in phone settings that block this type of light.

If decreasing or eliminating all unnecessary usage of blue light emitting devices in the evening isn’t possible, there are apps such as iflux or the nightshift setting on the iphone that actually block the blue lights. You can also take it a step further and purchase a pair of blue light blocking glasses to fashionably don around your domain in the evening. This $12 pair pictured above and in the video are the ones I’ve been utilizing to optimize potential for deeper regenerative & restorative sleep; much to the comical delight of my family.