Have trouble getting to sleep? Try wearing sunglasses!

6th January 2017

  A sleep expert has suggested that if you have trouble getting to sleep you might want to try wearing sunglasses first! We’re not making this up! The sleep expert is Glenn Landry, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of British Columbia’s Aging, Mobility, and Cognitive Neuroscience Lab. He thinks that wearing sunglasses before going to bed might help to regulate the body’s circadian rhythms. Circadian rhythms are essentially the body’s clock, telling you when to be asleep and when to be awake.

These rhythms are deeply affected by light exposure. In general, the human body is programmed to be sleepy when it’s dark and wakeful when it’s light, which is all well and good when your main light source is the sun. But when you bring in artificial light at night— especially the blue light emitted by cell phones, tablets, and televisions — it can make your circadian rhythms go out ‘sync’ resulting in problems with falling and staying asleep. Mr Landry said, “Beginning at eight at night, two hours before the time I want to go to bed, I wear sunglasses….I’m trying to avoid light and I’m trying to tell my body clock that this is the end of the day.”

So there we are; another reason why you should never be far from your sunglasses!