(News.Cnet.com) — I don’t know a single person who, from dusk to dozing off, isn’t exposed to some kind of electrical lighting, especially in these darkest of winter days. Unfortunately, study after study is coming out linking this nighttime lighting to various ailments, almost always due to the effect light has on melatonin suppression.
The latest findings, via a study just accepted for publication in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, finds that exposure to electrical light between dusk and bedtime “strongly suppresses melatonin levels and may impact physiological processes regulated by melatonin signaling, such as sleepiness, thermoregulation, blood pressure, and glucose homeostasis.”
So not only have researchers recently found links between light at night and cancer and depression, there is now reason to further investigate its effect on blood pressure and diabetes.
“On a daily basis, millions of people choose to keep the lights on prior to bedtime and during the usual hours of sleep,” says lead author Joshua Gooley of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston in a news release. “Given that chronic light suppression of melatonin has been hypothesized to increase relative risk for some types of cancer and that melatonin receptor genes have been linked to type 2 diabetes, our findings could have important health implications for shift workers who are exposed to indoor light at night over the course of many years.”
The hormone melatonin is produced (at night, or now it seems, in darkness) by the pineal gland in the brain. It plays a role regulating the sleep-wake cycle and also in lowering blood pressure and body temperature.
(8 votes, average: 3.88 out of 5)
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Because I have to take a water pill, I have to get up a few times during the night and much prefer to wake to a lighted room than having to adjust to turning on a light or tripping over things in the dark.
I keep a red light as a nightlight in the bathroom. Doesn’t hurt the eyes, and makes just enough light to see by.
As a night owl, I have always been at my best during the night, and sleeping during the day. Light has never bothered me when sleeping. Guess we night workers who love it must have some inborn protection.