blue light glasses

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a spike in screen time among many smartphone owners. This has been due to factors like home-based jobs, online learning, binge-watching, or COVID updates. A possible issue is blue light emissions from LED screens might reduce sleep quality. A pair of blue-light glasses might be the solution to provide a better night’s sleep.  

Blue Light and Sleep Quality  

Today the quantity and quality of sleep have dropped significantly. While there are various factors, one of the main ones is screen time. Here’s why. Blue light can affect your ability to get a good night’s sleep like if you don’t choose an appropriate mattress.

What Is Blue Light?

The colors of the light spectrum from red to violet have different effects on people. Blue wavelengths actually provide benefits during daylight hours. That’s due to boosted attention, mood, and reaction times. In fact, white light and sunlight include different wavelengths, including a large amount of blue light, according to Healthline.

Studies also show that blue light might help in various areas like:

  • Performance
  • Fatigue
  • Sleep
  • Mood  
  • Depression

Meanwhile, energy-efficient lights and electronics devices with screens can cause these same effects at nighttime, which can prevent you from getting 40 winks.

Is Blue Light a Bad Thing?

While blue light is eco-friendly, it can also reduce sleep qualityand might result in diseases like type-2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.  

Artificial lighting is a part of the modern world, but it also has some downsides versus natural light. It’s unclear if such lighting is directly linked to health conditions like obesity, but past studies show it might produce negative results.  

Blue Light Explained (video)

Internal Clocks and Blue Light   

One of the main issues is when it gets dark outdoors, it’s Mother Nature’s cue to humans’ circadian rhythms (internal clock) that it’s time to sleep.

The average length of a circadian rhythm is about 24.25 hours, according to Harvard University. Night owls and early birds have respectively slightly longer or shorter circadian rhythms.

Light exposure lowers the body’s “sleep hormone” melatonin. Studies show that blue light suppresses melatonin release 2x longer than green light and shifts circadian rhythms by 2x longer.

While LED lights are more energy-efficient than incandescent lights, they also produce more blue light. In fact, fluorescent light bulbs generate more blue light than basic incandescent lights.

Blue-light Glasses: Better Sleep? 

Recent studies show that wearing amber-tinted glasses near bedtime might provide various benefits related to:

  • Sleep quality
  • Work focus
  • Work behavior

Here’s how they work. Blue light-filtering glasses block all blue light. This prevents the brain from getting the signal that it should stay awake, which is what happens during sunlight exposure, for example.

These glasses create “physiologic” darkness, which can boost melatonin levels. The result is the quantity and quality of people’s sleep is improved.

In fact, wearing these glasses can help the body produce as much melatonin as during darkness—even when the person is in a room lit with artificial light!  

This result might improve sleep quality and make remote work and online learning easier during the coronavirus pandemic.

Do Blue Glasses Work?

Let’s get to the nitty-gritty of the eyewear’s effectiveness. Researchers have conducted various tests to determine whether or not blue light glasses actually provide claimed benefits like improved sleep.

This includes a few recent studies in Brazil that compared the results of blue light-filtering glasses and fake “sham” glasses. The blue light glasses produced various benefits:

  • Longer sleep (up to 6%)
  • Quality sleep (up to 14%)
  • Work engagement (up to 8% higher)
  • Helping behavior (up to 17.8%)
  • Less negative behavior (up to 11.7%)

These results showed that the blue light-filtering glasses improved sleep quality and work performance, according to Harvard Business Review.

Truth or Trend? Blue Light Glasses (video)

Who Benefits Most from Blue-Light Glasses?

Sleep experts explain that “night owls” tend to benefit more from blue light-blocking glasses. That’s because their internal clock and work times are less lined up versus early risers. People who stay up later are more likely to have more exposure to blue light sources like light bulbs and LED screens.

Conclusion

You can use amber-colored glasses as part of a general approach to reduce blue light exposure. Wear the blue light glasses 3+ hours before bedtime and wear eye masks while sleeping. You can also fall asleep faster with methods like a quiet room, bedtime routine, and comfortable mattress. Like blue light glasses, they can give restful sleep the green light!

Author Bio:

Brett is a writer at ID-Mag. An enthusiast and expert when it comes to sleep products, Brett dedicates a lot of his time reading, researching, and reviewing about both traditional and emerging sleep brands that manufacture varied types of sleep products – from eco-mattresses, smart pillows to cooling sleep systems, Brett has probably reviewed them all. Brett also finds sleep especially important since he juggles a small business which he runs from home, makes sure he spends time with his daughter and he also writes during his spare time – you can definitely see that he needs a great forty winks all night, every night so he’ll make sure that you get great sleep, too!

By Anurag Rathod

Anurag Rathod is an Editor of Appclonescript.com, who is passionate for app-based startup solutions and on-demand business ideas. He believes in spreading tech trends. He is an avid reader and loves thinking out of the box to promote new technologies.