Comment on First Words

• Cris_Color@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  The opposite, they filter blue wavelengths, (and some green), preventing light exposure from telling my brain it’s time to be awake :)

  I have delayed sleep phase disorder, which makes sleep happen much later for me than is typical, so things that can make it easier to fall asleep a bit sooner can be helpful

  If you’re interested in the science, about 2 hours before we’d naturally feel drowsy and wanna go to sleep the body hits what’s called your DLMO, or ‘dim light melatonin onset’, which is the point in your circadian rhythm when your alertness starts to drop off for the day as your body starts to secrete melatonin that accumulates in your system until you feel sleepy. But as the name suggests, this only happens when that biological process isn’t delayed by light exposure, and it’s most sensitive to blue wavelengths (technically it’s a bell-curve sort of distribution where the green side of blue is most activating, and it’s less activating the more you stray to either side of that wavelength). If I understand correctly light exposure similarly triggers your body to pull melatonin out of your system, essentially waking you up if you just got up for the day, or are feeling sleepy at bedtime.

  Light intensity also matters, which these glasses do less to help with, but they really cut down on the wavelengths that are most disruptive to feeling sleepy. Because my sleep is SO late, the easiest way for me to vote is to go right before my bedtime when the sun is up, which can be hugely destabilizing to my already pretty crap sleep schedule 😅

  So the glasses here made it slightly easier to go home from voting and being out in the sunlight, and try to start winding down for sleep I’m hoping to also get some of those silly looking fitover sunglasses to help minimize light intensity, and then I’ll have the option to take them off when I go inside running daylight errands before sleep, as that’s when I have access to places during open hours

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