J.D. Moyer decided recently to conduct a little experiment with artificial light and his sleep cycle.
The sleep-deprived Oakland, California, resident had read that strong light — whether it’s beaming down from the sun or up from the screens of personal electronics — can reset a person’s internal sleep clock.
So, for one month, whenever the sun set, he turned off all the gadgets and lights in his house — from the bulb hidden in his refrigerator to his laptop computer.
It worked. Instead of falling asleep at midnight, Moyer’s head was hitting the pillow as early as 9 p.m. He felt so well-rested during the test, he said, that friends remarked on his unexpected morning perkiness.
“I had the experience, a number of times, just feeling kind of unreasonably happy for no reason. And it was the sleep,” he said. “Sure, you can get by with six or seven hours, but sleeping eight or nine hours — it’s a different state of mind.”
Moyer may be onto something.
It makes sense.
I had often read USA today, do facebook, etc on my smallish iPOD touch before sleep (while in bed) and it does seem to disrupt my sleep.
The iPAD may be cause for investing in sleep aid companies.
I’ve tried matching my sleep pattern to sundown/sunrise and I’ve found I’m generally happier when I do that.
Sounds like we need to spend less time staring at glowing rectangles.
http://tinyurl.com/yhhfd5n
That Damn refrigerator light keeps me up all night too!!!
He was probably so happy because his power bill was noticeably lower.
@Pikachu – I’ve tried matching my sleep pattern to sundown/sunrise and I’ve found I’m generally happier when I do that.
So.. You sleep 14 hours a day in the winter and 6 hours a day during the summer. Ugh.. That would kill me. =)
I’ll say it does, the computer with ME is getting old and snores/farts.
Mourning,
Good point. Though, at some latitudes, you’d just sleep 12 hours a day all year long. At seriously northern (or far southern hemisphere) latitudes, you just get to sleep for 6 months and wake for 6 months.
For wildlife viewing, it helps to be crepuscular (active dawn and dusk). This is much easier in fall when days are short than spring and early summer when days are long.
I was camping on an ice floe in June near Bylot island. Sleep disruption with 24 hr sunlight is pretty severe. During “night” the sun was still well above the horizon, but a bit lower than during the “day” when it was a bit higher. The difference was like going between 8AM and 10AM in New York during summer, except that the sun basically went around in a circle being lowest at the point when it was due north and highest when it was due south.
I can’t say I know the exact bay in which we camped. It was somewhere in this channel (hope the link works).
http://tinyurl.com/3ao48pu
A lot of the sleep disturbance we have from out electronic gadgets is due to the color of light they pump out.
Red and orange light has far less effect on our sleeping well than the old green displays on VCRs and now blue LEDs on everything that they can possibly cram them into.
I’m not at all sure how a refrigerator light could possibly keep one awake though, unless your aircon has broken and you make a fridge-tent like Homer Simpson once did.
#4 Omg me too!!!
Seriously, the guy does know that the refrigerator bulb is only on when the door is open, right?
Well, the fact that he was worried about the refrigerator light, which isn’t even turned on when the door is shut should tell you that this dude has much deeper problems than sleep deprivation.
That said, small leds on things like modems and phone machines don’t keep me awake. Even the night light in the hallway isn’t a problem. But a ctr or lcd monitor or television glowing even in the corner of the room will do it. Even if the television is not tuned to a station and has that dark gray but still light up screen that they do these days.
Written in the past tense, it looks like after experiencing all the wonderfulness of dark, our hero is back to his old ways?
I haven’t slept well in years. Just about the time I started sleeping in front of the tv. That, and having racoons run across my roof every early morning. Modern life, full of sound and light.
Reminds me I am supposed to invest in some “active dreaming” goggles and maybe connect them to a light source and music to come on with the detection of REM.
I have experienced active dreaming when traveling by airplane. Very sleepy and the motion of the airplane was enough to let me actively dream. Nice experience.
The light does have a big impact. I try and block it all out at bedtime. I even throw a shirt over the digital alarm clock.
On the other hand, when I had a PC in my room the hum of the power supply helped me sleep. It blocked out all the other small erratic sounds that would normally disturb me.
I took everything out of my refrigerator including the shelves and got in it and shut the door, the light went out. So there!
bobbo,
Pretty high carbon footprint for a good night’s sleep, no? Why not try this?
http://abstrusegoose.com/268
Scott–I think I “got” most of the inside/techy humor, but it wasn’t funny?
I guess I’m more into cows standing up than floating heads?
But keep the good stuff coming, good to know its out there.
Edison’s electric light was one of the worst things to ever occur to civilization. Read “Winston Churchill’s Afternoon Nap”, to understand the human body and it’s adaptation the natural cycles of sleep and wakefulness. Try to imagine a world, (the 1700’s) wherein people slept at night. All people, every night.
It never, ever occurred to anybody (but me, apparently) to use a color scheme consisting of a black background & a dark purple foreground (what I call “night mode”) for reading texts. Everybody in the world (except moi) sits around in the dark in front of CRT’s with blistering LCD sunlight blasting at their faces, burning out their retinas—& then they wonder why they can’t fall asleep.
#16 – bobbo,
Scott–I think I “got” most of the inside/techy humor, but it wasn’t funny?
Don’t ask me what you find funny. I thought it was mildly cute and apropos. So, I posted it. In this case, I like the joke of optimizing the counting of sheep via an algorithm, which probably defeats the purpose completely.
The outcome of that study was obvious 40 years ago. They’re correct.