LIGHT VIEWING AT DIFFERENT TIMES OF DAY CHANGES YOUR ENTIRE SLEEP-WAKE PATTERN • - Understanding the points in the slide can help you dramatically improve your sleep and levels of daytime alertness. They can also help you shift your schedule as needed for work or travel. - “Morning” sunlight is when the sun is still near the horizon until it’s about halfway overhead (depending on time of year - and where you live this clock time will differ). - At night it takes VERY little LED light (the typical type used in screens and bulbs nowadays) to suppress your melatonin levels and to shift your circadian clock, as well as to disrupt the architecture of your sleep. It wasn’t long ago that most people used incandescent bulbs, which don’t do this to the same degree. Candles and dim red light are VERY low lux and will not suppress or alter your circadian rhythm. - While blue blocking glasses can help at night, the best thing to do is to block both blue and green wavelengths, given that most LEDs strongly in that range. - The basic take away here is to have very bright mornings and getting some in the middle of the day can be good as well provided you don’t burn (UV index is highest mid-day), and then to dim the lights at night, maybe use dim red lights or blue&green blocking glasses. - You also want it very dark while you sleep. You may need an eye mask for that. There are data showing that even 100lux light in the room while you sleep significantly alters morning glucose levels; not good. - And if you wake up before the sun, a 10,000 Lux artificial light can be helpful. I don’t have any relationship to companies that sell them, but there are multiple sources out there. - Please put any questions you have in the comments section below this post. - If you’d like to learn more about the use of light for health, just put that into the search function at hubermanlab.com. Lots of zero cost resources there on that topic. - And as always, thank you for your interest in science! - @hubermanlab @stanford.med @stanford - #neuroscience #science #ciencia #neurociencia #sun #light #circadian #health #wake #up #nightowls #morningperson