Dear LPG,

I know that over the years I seem to need less and less sleep each night, and like many others my sleep is interrupted more often by at least a couple of nightly trips to the bathroom, which aren’t that helpful.  I know that I am not alone here and I also suspect that like me, there are lots of others for whom this problem has resulted in the habit of sleeping with a light on.   I started to do this as I got older after I managed to push the light off my bedside table while trying to turn it on very early one morning.  A night light was my solution to never having that happen again, and I can’t be sure but I don’t think that it affects my sleep that much.  I have one with a dimmer setting which I keep to a minimum.

I have another guilty habit that I think I share with quite a few others in our modern technological world.  I have got into the habit of googling myself to sleep rather than using a good book these days.   I mean that I used to read a few pages of a book before bed to get into the mood for sleep but have swapped the book for a check of my mobile smart phone and it was on just such an occasion that I Googled some really interesting information about sleep, light and colour.

During one of my pre-sleep google sessions the internet revealed that scientists have done quite a bit of research in to the pros and cons of sleeping with the light on, and I was also surprised to learn some information about the effect that the colour of the light you sleep with can have on you.

I hope that LPG will be able to supply links to all the details learned in just a few minutes of personal night-time research on the subject, but what really stood out for me is that during the night our bodies are much happier being subjected to red light at night and that blue light is the most disruptive influence.  It is also interesting that mobile phones offer much more blue light than red and I found more than one website I looked at suggesting that you don’t use them for a couple of hours before bed time.  It is all about melatonin, the hormone that influences our sleep-wake cycles and apparently the colour red has the least unsettling effect on the production of it in our bodies.

So I am tempted to change my normal light for a red one to see if it really makes a difference but I think I will stick with my nightly Googling habit.

AH, Ladywell

AH was kind enough to pass on the information found on line and we have also found some interesting video clips which we hope will enlighten readers.  Please note that much of the information is geared toward young people but perhaps we are not that different …

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