Having trouble falling asleep at night?

Do you sit on your computer or other electronic device in the evening or at night while sitting in bed? This could be the cause of your sleeplessness. The blue light emitted by our computers and other electronic devices is the same as exposing ourselves to sunlight. "Light is one of the most important external factors that can affect sleep. It does so both directly, by making it difficult for people to fall asleep, and indirectly, by influencing the timing of our internal clock and thereby affecting our preferred time to sleep." Many studies have verified this information.

What can we do to combat this? There have been advances through software applications which will change the light emitted by our computers based on the time of day. "Light influences our internal clock through specialized "light sensitive" cells in the retina of our eyes. These cells, which occupy the same space as the rods and cones that make vision possible, tell the brain whether it is daytime or nighttime, and our sleep patterns are set accordingly."

There are applications that track the daylight time schedules in your area and adjust the type of light emitted from your computer accordingly. One such application is called f.lux. If you're interested in reading about it the website is justgetflux.com. If you want to read about how artificial light affects your sleep an article you can look up is "How artificial light is wrecking your sleep, and what to do about it" by Chris Kresser.