• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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BusinessDay

Modifying screen and sleep time for optimal living

Quality sleep and its benefit to your personal health

After a long day at work, you felt that you needed that good 8-hour sleep. Plopping down on your bed, you hurriedly say your night prayers and close your eyes. Then, you hear that familiar notification sound. You picked up your phone, replied to about four to five messages, and before you knew it, you had already spent more than 2 hours on your screen.

Now, you need to wake up by 6am the next morning or you would be late for work. You are left with the option of sleeping for a few hours, and you eventually wake up feeling groggy, tired, and irritated. Sounds familiar, right?

It is an indisputable fact that sleep is important for a healthy lifestyle. Despite that, many people still struggle to get the recommended 8-hour sleep at night. This can be attributed to a wide range of factors, and excessive screen time is not excluded from the list. This article discusses how an excess of screen time can disrupt a person’s sleep, the implications, and how screen and sleep time can be modified for optimal living.

We live in a world that is increasingly dependent on technology. Hence, smartphones, computers, and other electronic devices play a huge role in how we work, play, and communicate. However, these devices emit blue light or High Energy Visible (HEV) light, a colour in the natural electromagnetic energy spectrum that can be seen by the human eye.

This blue light from screens suppresses the production of melatonin, a hormone that controls the sleep-wake cycle. The production of melatonin is often triggered by darkness, so the light from your screens tricks your brain into thinking it is time to wake up when you are supposed to sleep, increasing your general alertness.

Blue light emission from screens does not only suppress the production of melatonin and increase your alertness at the wrong time, but it also affects your natural body circadian rhythm.

Your circadian rhythm is a 24-hour cycle that helps your body naturally operate on a healthy sleep-wake schedule. This means that during the day, your body produces cortisol, the hormone that helps you stay awake and alert, and at night, your body produces melatonin, the hormone that helps you sleep. Exposure to blue light at night can affect the body’s circadian rhythm, as well as delay good sleep.

Now, the sad truth is that having one’s sleep disrupted due to an excess of screen time does more than make one feel irritated, groggy, and grumpy all day. The prolonged effects of sleep deprivation are real and alarming.

To begin with, sleep deprivation drains a person’s mental ability. It worsens symptoms of mental conditions like anxiety and depression. Not only that, it slows the learning process.

During sleep, the brain forms new cells that help the processing and retention of new information, and little or no sleep hinders the formation of these cells. There is also trouble with concentration because of the inability to focus well. This can make it quite difficult to pick up information and can also be detrimental to a person’s creative and problem-solving skills.

Read also: Sleeping well to live well

Additionally, having little or no sleep time can endanger a person’s physical health. Because the body needs sleep to produce certain antibodies to fight infectious diseases, lack of sleep weakens the immune system and makes the body prone to all sorts of diseases. Also, sleep deprivation may lead to increased blood pressure and higher levels of chemicals linked to inflammation, both of which can cause heart disease.

Moreso, having little or no sleep delays the body’s release of insulin, the hormone responsible for blood sugar regulation. This makes people who are sleep-deprived susceptible to higher blood sugar levels, making them prone to diabetes.

It is also important to note that sleep distortion can as well affect a person’s balance and coordination, increasing the risks of falls, physical accidents, and in severe cases, car accidents.

From the aforementioned, it is apparent that an uncoordinated use of devices can disrupt one’s sleep, and the implications of sleep deprivation are dire. Now that you know how dangerous it is to use electronic gadgets before bed, it is advisable to avoid them for at least 30 minutes before sleep.

In rare cases, where you need to use your phones, laptops, or computers at night, you can make use of blue blocker glasses, which are specially designed to protect your eyes from blue light emissions.

Also, most electrical gadgets are now equipped with a “night-time mode” or a “warm-light” feature that reduces blue light emission. It is advisable to adjust your phone display settings to this feature if you need to use your device at night.

Thus, there is no gainsaying that screen time before bed could disrupt sleep which could be detrimental to one’s health and work-life productivity. It also delays the natural body circadian rhythm; suppresses the production of melatonin and hinders getting to bed on time.

Therefore, for you to get a full 8 hours of sleep and maintain a healthy sleep habit, limit your exposure to blue light at night, invest in blue blocker glasses, or better still, turn off your screens right before you sleep.

Bolanle is a communications intern at the Institute for Work and Family Integration, Lagos