Blue light might actually be harmful as it disturbs your sleep. Several previous studies have discovered the fact that exposure to blue light in the evening may interfere with one’s sleep pattern, making it hard to fall and stay asleep.
A new paper from the University of Manchester agrees to those studies, stating that blue light filters used later in the day may actually make it more difficult to fall asleep. The reason is that it exposes humans to unnatural scales of warm light during a period of the day when natural light is gloomy and cold.
The Sun offers people bright, warm light, and it covers the orange-yellow nuances we’d else get from fire or candle fire-colored light bulbs. During the nighttime, though, this warm light is changed with a dull, cold white light that comes from the Moon. This type of light naturally exposes people to blue wavelengths produced by numerous kinds of artificial lightning.
Blue Light Filters Might Harm Our Sleep Cycle
The natural conversion from warm to cold light has an essential role in adjusting our sleep patterns, the study says. Blue light filters such as the ones found on most smartphones and tablets nowadays may actually harm sleep cycles than non-filtered light, the scientists explain.
Dr. Tim Brown says: “We show the common view that blue light has the strongest effect on the clock is misguided; in fact, the blue colors that are associated with twilight have a weaker effect than the white or yellow light of equivalent brightness… Our findings suggest that using dim, cooler, lights in the evening, and bright warmer lights in the day may be more beneficial.”
The research included mice exposed to lightning that could have its hues changed without adjusting its brightness. In the case of exposure to yellow and blue light of the same level of brightness, the bluer colors were discovered to have a lower impact on the body’s internal clock in comparison to the yellow tones. The apprehension of light colors was eventually found to play an essential part in body clock regulation.