Can’t tear yourself away from Pinterest when it’s time for bed? You might be seriously hurting yourself. According to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, using gadgets before bed can not only shake up your sleep patterns—which we already knew, somewhat—it can also harm your health in the long run, too.
In an inpatient study at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, researchers recruited 12 participants to live in their lab for two weeks. For five of those nights, they read e-books on an iPad for four consecutive hours before bedtime. And for the next five nights, they simply read a printed book for four hours before bedtime.
Researchers then measured how each participant slept during the study, enforcing strict bedtimes. Lead researcher Anne-Marie Chang told Vox that participants didn’t change how long they slept during the study—but what really changed was the way they slept.
She found that using light-emitting devices before bed prolonged the time it took to fall asleep, suppressed levels of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin, delayed circadian rhythms, and lowered the amount of time participants got the deepest REM sleep levels. It also made them more alert at bedtime and groggier in the morning.
But gadgets do way more than just make you grumpy when you wake up. The study notes that lower melatonin levels can lead to increased risks of breast cancer, colon cancer, and prostate cancer. Chang told Vox that to avoid these scary health consequences, you can switch to print books and magazines, dim the light on your devices, and avoid the temptation of an all-night TV binge. (Except, maybe, when the next season of House of Cards lands on Netflix, because occasional pre-bed screen time shouldn't hurt you too much, even though making it a habit could.)
No comments:
Post a Comment