One of the top behavioral health issues presenting in primary care is sleep. Whether it is too much sleep or not enough, poor quality or the wrong quantity of sleep can have profound effects on physical and mental health.
One area that is often focused on in sleep work is the impact of exposure to light, with much of that focus being on so called “blue light,” or light immitted from electronic devices. But what does science say about this?
In a recent article published by NPR, Will Stone tried to answer that question. He summarized the work of a group of scientists who tracked nearly 90,000 people in the U.K. Participants spent a week with wrist-worn activity devices equipped with light sensors. Then, they analyzed their risk of dying over the next eight years. The results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.
The study participants with the brightest nights had a 21% to 34% higher risk of premature death, compared to those who were mostly in the dark between midnight and dawn. The opposite was true for daytime. People who enjoyed the brightest days had a 17% to 34% lower mortality risk than those who were in dim environments during the daytime.
The data underscore that light represents an “emerging risk factor for poor health and longevity,” says Daniel Windred, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at Flinders University in Australia.
Want to learn more? Read the full article and source material at NPR.org.