Do you ever have trouble
sleeping? Or feel like you slept,
but it didn't do anything because
you’re just tired all day? Well, then this
video is for you. Hi. I’m Dr. Chris Masterjohn
of ChrisMasterjohnPhD.com and you’re
watching Chris Masterjohn Lite, where the name of the game is
“Details? Shmetails. Just tell me what works!”
And today we’re going to be talking about
basic principles of light hygiene for better
sleep at night and better wakefulness during the day.
The way that we do that is
we need to convince our brains that it's
daytime when it really is and that it’s nighttime
when it really is. The problem is that
the signal that our brains use to know the
difference is blue light, and in the great outdoors
it's always been really bright during the
day and really dark at night.
In our modern lifestyles, not true. In the daytime
we’re indoors where it’s less bright
and then in the night time we turn on lights to make it more bright, so we’ve taken
that night and day differential and shrunk it down
to the point where our bodies don't know the difference.
And if our bodies don’t know the difference, our bodies can’t
prepare to do the things that need to be done
when we’re sleeping to maximize the rest we get out of that
sleep and can't prepare to do
the things that we need to do when we’re awake to maximize
our alertness and wakefulness during the day.
So how do we get around that?
Well, fortunately there are a few tweaks that we can make to our
lifestyles in order to reconstruct a natural rhythm of light.
Number one.
Get outdoor sunshine every morning for about a half
our at a consistent time each day.
For me, I take a half hour walk outdoors between
9 and 10 AM.
That depends on when you wake up in the morning and when you start your day.
Find what works for you, but make it a consistent schedule of morning sunshine.
Number two. For the two to four hours
before bed, block blue light. How do we block blue light?
Well, I use
this lightbulb for ambient lighting from lowbluelights.com.
It's bright enough that it
allows me to read a book and yet
emits low enough blue light that it doesn't interfere with
my sleep. There's also
blue blocking glasses, like these Solar Shield fits-over
or these Swannies
and these are great
because you can go
into any other kind of lighting, maybe you don’t have control over
the ambient lighting and you can block that lighting
but they’re kind of dark
so it's hard to read with those without straining your eyes.
If you're trying to create two to four hours
of blue blocking it’s important to be consistent. So for example
if you're reading by the ambient light,
and then you go to the refrigerator
because you realized you needed a sandwich and all
of the sudden for 30 seconds you blast yourself with
bright blue light, what was the point of the two hours
of blue blocking if now all of a sudden you
tell your brain, “hey, it’s daytime out again”?
So it's important to piece together any kind of routine
that would work for you to make two to four hours
of consistent solid blue blocking time.
I also use a nightlight and a flashlight
from lowbluelights.com to help
round out that blue blocking at night.
Now the third principle is that
this has to be consistent at the same time
every night. If you're deliberately trying to sleep five
hours during the week and make up for it 12 or 13 hours every
weekend, that lack of consistency is going to
undermine your efforts. If you don't
fall asleep at the same time every night that's fine.
If you make your light routine consistent
each day, that’s going to help establish a pattern
that will eventually train your body to get tired around the
same time every night and wake up around the same time every morning.
All right, I hope these tips were helpful for you.
Signing off this is Chris Masterjohn of ChrisMasterjohnPhD.com.
You’ve been watching Chris Masterjohn Lite
and I’ll see you in the next video.