BREAKING

mardi 24 septembre 2013

Sleep Patterns

  The graph of Shawn Powers' sleep  patterns looks a lot like mine did, until  I realized that I probably entrain to  artificial light [see Shawn's "SIeep as  Android" article in the Upfront section  of the July 2013 issuel. In other words,  my brain misinterprets artificial lightas sunlight, so it doesn't think it's  nighttime even after the sun has set,  and so it doesn't prepare my body's  physiology for sleep. Those changes  take a while (an hour or two), so when  I turned out the lights, I tossed and  turned for an hour or two until my  body adjusted to the darkness.  As it turns out, this is all due to the  presence of retinal neurons that  function to detect a narrow range  of blue light (sky blue, in fact). Their  job is to inform the brain when they  no longer detect that light (that is,  when night has fallen). However,  in some individuals, these cells see  enough blue light in the artificial light  spectrum to fool them into thinking  the sun is still up (computer screens  and TVs emit a /ot of light in this blue  range). I'm not sure why this happens  in some individuals and not others,  but I wonder if it might have to do  with eye color (I have blue eyes).  In any event, it's easy to use glasses to  filter out this narrow range of blue light,  thereby plunging the relevant retinal  neurons into "darkness". Individuals  with this problem would don the glasses  for I-2 hours before they wish to retire;  after a couple hours, sleep then (in my  experience) comes easily and naturally,  and much less fitfully.

WWW.L|NUXJOURNAL.COM  I bought a pair of these glasses from  http://www.|owbIueIights.com,  and my sleep patterns have improved  enormously. The effects have lasted  long enough (about a year) to rule  out any significant placebo effect.  You might want to give them a try  (I have no association whatsoever  with this company, except as a  satisfied customer).  -Chris Brandon  Whoa, that's fascinating. /have  b/uish-grey eyes as we//_ (Again,  this might be anecdota/, but it's still  interesting.) /'// have to try that out.  Thanks for the info!-Shawn Powers

Aucun commentaire:

Enregistrer un commentaire

 
Copyright © 2013 Key Pirate
Distributed By Free Blogger Templates | Design by FBTemplates | emThemes
    Twitter Facebook Google Plus Vimeo Videosmall Flickr YouTube