Healthy Beat

Dr. Anne-Marie Chang, a partner neuroscientist in BWH’s Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders who was a co-creator on the study, told that they know from past work that light from screens at night modifies sleepiness and readiness, and represses melatonin levels. This study shows complete aftereffects of an immediate correlation between perusing with a light-discharging device and perusing a printed book and the outcomes on sleep.

If you would prefer not to feel like a zombie amid the day, the discoveries are clear: read a real, printed book if you must encourage your brain before bed. Chang said that rest lack — not sufficiently getting sleep or acquiring low quality rest — has been connected to other wellbeing issues, for example, corpulence, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases.

Chang also said that constant suppression of melatonin has likewise been connected with expanded danger of specific tumors. Evidently, sleep has its own advantages, so reducing your sleep is a terrible thought at any rate.

The study analyzed 12 members who read on an iPad for four hours prior to bed for five days in a row, a procedure that was rehashed with printed books. For some, the request was switched: They began with printed books and moved to iPads. iPad readers took more time to sleep, felt less tired around at night and had shorter REM sleep contrasted with the book readers.

Here is some more reasons to stop staring at your phone before going to sleep:

1. Radiation Can Be Harmful
Yes, there are a still a lot of questions about cell phone radiation and how it is affecting you, even after you discontinue use of your mobile device. There’s a lot we don’t know, but one thing we do know from a 2008 study is that “people exposed to mobile radiation for three hours before going to sleep had more trouble falling into and staying in a deep sleep. “If you aren’t sleeping well, you’re waking up exhausted and you have a hard time drifting off to a blissful state of rest, this could be why.

2. You’ll Experience Later Bedtimes
Often unintentionally, if you use your mobile device or iPad in bed you will end up going to sleep later, and therefore sleeping less. It’s happened to all of us…you get wrapped in an article or on a website or on Facebook and before you know it hours have gone by. Or perhaps you read something disturbing and you can’t stop thinking about it for hours. No matter how it happens, cell phone use in bed leads to later bedtimes and a poor night of sleep. You’re better off finding a new way (device-free) to wind down before bed.

3. The Blue Light Before Bed Could be Affecting your Sleep Cycle
It seems so harmless. You’re just checking your email. You’re only glancing at Instagram for a few minutes. You’re simply leaving your phone nearby in case you need it…but those innocent actions could be doing damage as the electronic screen’s light could actually be messing with your body’s internal clock. The bright screen (if left on) can emit a light that’s bright enough to make you think it’s daytime, which makes this blue light before bed a terrible idea. It can impact your hormone levels and your brain’s ability to go into nighttime mode.

4. You’ll be Tense, Even in Your Sleep
In order to truly rest your mind and body while you sleep, you need to relax and disconnect from everything that stresses you out during your day. With your cell phone near by, and with your email the last thing you see/think about before bed, you’ll be tense and on guard, even while you sleep. As Huff Post reports, according to sleep expert Dr. Neil Stanley, “in order to get a good night’s sleep, you have to feel safe and not worried about anything. By having your phone close by at night, you’re subconsciously saying you wish to attend to that phone. The brain will monitor the situation and your sleep will be lighter and more likely to be disturbed.”

5. You Can be Disturbed in the Middle of the Night
Your best friend in Paris just wants to say hi when she wakes up in the morning, but her text at 8am will wake you up at 2am, and it might be nearly impossible to get back to your sleep cycle after that wakeup call. In addition, if you wake up to the buzz of unread emails you will lie awake feeling guilt over not answering a client’s question or your boss’s request. In order to do your job well during the day, you need to ensure you sleep well at night. And with a cell phone near by todisrupt your rest every 5 minutes, a good night’s sleep is basically impossible.

6. You Will Feel Hung-Over the Next Day
No, seriously. When you read an iPad in bed before sleep, even if you didn’t touch that bottle of wine, you may wake up feeling a bit beat-up if you used your gadget late at night before bed. Why? Russell Johnson, assistant professor of management at Michigan State University, explains that “because [Smartphones] keep us mentally engaged late into the evening, they make it hard to detach from work so we can relax and fall asleep.” That results in a poor night of sleep, not nearly enough rest, and us waking up feeling like we were hit by a truck. And when we don’t rest at night, we are not nearly as productive during the day.

7. You Could Wake Up With No Battery Left
Raise your hand if you have fallen asleep with your phone in your hand, only to forget to charge it at all overnight. You wake up with a cramp in your arm from sleeping in a funny position and your battery capacity is down to 2%. And you have about 20 minutes to get ready for work. It’s an unnecessary source of stress during an already stressful part of your day. Put your phone away before bed, plug it in and turn it off, seal the lid on your day and go to sleep.

8. The Health Risks of Cell Phone Use is Unclear
First of all, we’re not claiming that using your cell phone is going to give you cancer. We spend 65% of our day with a cell phone next to our head so let’s all hope that speculation is far from the truth. But in 2011 the World Health Organization did warn that mobile phone usage may be possibly carcinogenic to humans due to the exposure to radiation. Camille Chatterjee, Deputy Editor ofHealth Magazine, argues that “if you’re at all worried about the possible cancer risk…definitely don’t sleep with the phone next to your head.”