Growing up, my engineer father always told me to move my flowery glow-in-the-dark clock farther from my bedside. "You're nuts, Dad," I would respond, equating his concern with his conviction that he was dropped off by aliens in the New Mexican desert in 1947.
But now it turns out he may have had a point (although I'm still quite sure he came from a hospital in Pennsylvania, not a spaceship).
A new study published in the Journal of Biological Rhythms has shown that access to artificial light at night has shortened the amount of time we sleep each night. A recent University of Washington release describes the study:
The researchers compared two traditionally hunter-gatherer communities (in Argentina) that have almost identical ethnic and sociocultural backgrounds, but differ in one key aspect - access to electricity...
In their usual daily routines, the community with electricity slept about an hour less than their counterparts with no electricity. These shorter nights were mostly due to people who had the option to turn on lights and go to bed later, the researchers found. Both communities slept longer in the winter and for fewer hours in the summer.
This is the first study to examine differences in communities, rather than relying on artifically manipulating light in a laboratory.
"In a way, this study presents a proxy of what happened to humanity as we moved from hunting and gathering to agriculture and eventually to our industrialized society," said lead author Horacio de la Iglesia, a University of Washington biology professor. "All the effects we found are probably an underestimation of what we would see in highly industrialized societies where our access to electricity has tremendously disrupted our sleep."
So douse those lights, turn off the TV, push back your glowing clock, and embrace the dark — with a nice, long snooze.
Previously: New recommendation: Adults need at least 7 hours of sleep each night, Mobile devices at bedtime? Sleep experts weigh in and Can adjusting your mobile device's brightness help promote better sleep?
Via Medical News Today
Photo by Arma95
