Are You Afraid of the Dark?
I may be showing my age here but does anyone remember that show that was on YTV years ago? It was about a bunch of kids who spoke scary stories about a campfire. This blog isn’t quite like this, but it’s about the dark.
There is new research coming out that light pollution can disrupt our circadian rhythm. If you haven’t read this blog yet about how important sleep is I suggest you do here( http://bisbeefitness.com/sleep-issues/) In fact sleep disruption is getting to be so big now that Apple has released a new feature of their iPhone to help combat this. That’s huge!
The new Iphone’s feature is called “Night Shift” mainly if you have to be on your phone at night the iPhone will less blue light, and this wouldn’t disrupt your sleep as much.
Light pollution is so bad that in Los Angeles, the sky glow is visible from an airplane 200 miles away. Even more so during the big earthquake in 1994 and the blackout following there were people calling the 911 center and saying that they were seeing a “strange giant silvery cloud” in the dark sky. What they were actually seeing was the Milky Way.
“Two-thirds of the U.S. population and more than one-half of the people of Europe have already lost the ability to see the Milky Way with the naked eye. Moreover, 63% of the world population and 99% of the people of the European Union and the United States (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) live in areas where the night sky is brighter than the threshold for light-polluted status set by the International Astronomical Union—that is, the artificial sky brightness is greater than 10% of the natural sky brightness above 45° of elevation” this bit of information is directly from The First World Atlas of the Artificial Night Sky Brightness.
Disruption of the circadian rhythm is linked to a few health conditions like depression, insomnia, cardiovascular disease and cancer. This is no laughing matter, and this probably explains why a huge business like Apple has invested in technology to help with this.
If you are one of the millions of people suffering from sleep issues, here are some ways to help.
Invest in shutters for the windows for the room that you sleep in so no light can get in.
Make sure there are no artificial lights in your bedroom like an alarm clock or your cell phone.
Keep your bedroom slightly cool
If you need to be on the phone or computer at night invest in some special glasses so it doesn’t interrupt with your circadium rythym.
Or you can go out into the woods for a week and you will be a brand new person. The Sleep and Chronobiology Lab at the University of Colorado, took some random people into the rockies for a week and they were exposed to only natural sunlight and light from the campfires. This amount of light was 400x brighter than the light from their everyday lives! But when they came back to civilization their internal clocks had shifted to sync with the natural sunrise. This resulted in a clock that no longer promotes sleepiness after waking.
Now if only I can explain this to my wife! She hates camping but I have mild sleep apnea. Wish me luck!