Day 20 of #nourishednursenovember is use ambient lighting dimmed lights not only mane us look hotter but are actually so much better to help us drift off to sleep! This is one of my top tips that I advise clients who are unable to ‘switch off’ after a hard shift or at night. Switch off your mind by turning OFF any electrical activity going on around your bed. Have your phone on flight mode or OFF completely and at least 3 meters from your bed. I don’t know how many times I have heard people moan and say “Ermagawd so and so rang me at 1pm today when I was trying to sleep”- your fault, if your phone is on then you are expecting a call. Having the phone in the room makes us wired, or ‘hypervigilant’, disturbing our sleep triggering insomnia and other sleeping problems. The main issue here is that our phones produce artificial light which tricks the pineal gland in the brain to decrease the production of melatonin. This interferes with the body’s natural rhythm, tricking our bodies into believing it’s daytime. So instead of releasing the precious relaxing hormone melatonin, the body is producing cortisol, or stress and waking hormone. It’s not just the any light that your phone is emitting. Your phone is made up of different colours of light, mainly blue, which has a more stimulating effect. Ever felt more awake after scrolling facebook or reading on a tablet before bed? This is why. Some sleep experts advise a ban on screen time two to three hours before bed. This includes the TV. Even if you only use your phone as a clock, having a short bursts of light (from a message alert or checking your phone) has an effect. And because of the way we sleep, having a mobile by the bed means if we do wake up in the night, we’re more likely to STAY awake. Dr Guy Meadows, insomnia specialist at The Sleep School, London says ‘We sleep in cycles of 1½-2 hours, with brief moments of waking in between that normally go unnoticed. A flash of light or vibration of your phone from a text message at the wrong moment could make you fully conscious. This stems from our evolutionary past when, if we stayed fast asleep, there was a high chance we’d end up as a lion’s midnight snack. So the brain wakes to check for danger.’ So beware of these brief waking moments, any outside stimulus has the potential to remove you from your dreams. Lets face it, we are never truly relaxed when our mobile is by the bed. But what is some emergency were to happen? By having your phone close by at night, you’re subconsciously saying you wish to attend to that phone. What about the radiation? Mobile phones emit a type of electromagnetic radiation. Similar to the X-rays at work, this radiation can greatly affect the electrical activity in the brain during sleep causing restless nights. No thank you. X
Posted on: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 09:28:23 +0000
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