Screens off before bedtime!

Okay, I hadn’t really heard about melatonin supression before yesterday. The basic idea is that blue-rich light from electronic devices like LCD screens and televisions screws up our brain chemistry if we’re exposed to it a lot late at night, and keeps people from getting a good night’s sleep.

Now, sleep is very important to me. And I’ve been noticing some problems with it lately. So I decided to give this thing a try yesterday. I didn’t muck around with apps to adjust light levels or amber goggles, just set a deadline to turn off all the LCD screen devices, and gave myself a bedtime an hour later.

It was a little odd trying to steer clear of my computers, the television, my smartphones, tablet, etcetera for that hour, but worked out pretty well. I did some cleaning and dishes in the kitchen while listening to ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ on an old audiobook player that doesn’t really have enough of a screen to worry about. (It does have blue backlight, actually, but I figured it wasn’t bright enough to make a difference if I wasn’t staring at the readout for the whole hour.) And I enjoyed a nice bedtime snack while listening to some music.

I felt like I got some good sleep, and I’m going to try it again tonight, so I need to wrap-up this post quickly. I think one of the benefits for me may not be about blue light, just that without all my fancy devices, I won’t be so tempted to procrastinate and stay up later than I meant to! 😉