Do you find yourself having problems falling asleep at night?
Do you work on the computer at night?
If you answered both of those questions with a yes, then I might have a solution for you.
This is a free program that blocks light of a certain wavelength from your screen in the evening.
Before I get to the details, let me explain a little bit about how the brain regulates your sleep time.
The human brain has ways of regulating the times at which to stay awake and fall asleep. This is called the circadian rhythm.
Throughout evolution, the brain learned that the sun was a useful indicator of when it was appropriate to go to sleep or wake up.
It was best for us, as hunter-gatherers, to stay awake, hunt, gather and do our work when it was bright outside. The night, when it was dark, was the time to relax and sleep.
Our brains haven’t really changed much since then. We’re still hard-wired to want to be active when it is bright, and sleep while it is dark.
Still, our environments have changed dramatically. The distinction between day and night isn’t as clear anymore. The streetlights outside, headlights on cars, store windows, the artificial lighting in our houses, tvs, computer screens, all of this has become a natural part of modern life.
These artificial lights send signals to our brains the same way the sun did back in the day.
There is a small gland in the brain called the pineal gland, which secretes a hormone called melatonin that is supposed to make us sleepy. Light hitting the eyes is one of the key signals interpreted by the pineal gland, and tells it not to produce melatonin.
This means that if it is very bright in our environment in the evening, the brain doesn’t get the signal to secrete the hormone that makes us sleepy.
It turns out that blue light has the most dramatic effect to inhibit melatonin production.
The typical computer screen produces a lot of blue light, that is light at wavelengths of about 460-480nm.
This is a free lightweight software that you can install on pretty much any platform, including Mac, Windows, Linux and iPad/iPhone.
It starts automatically and runs in the background, without any obtrusive popups or anything like that.
You tell the program where on the planet you live, and it figures out the time of day the sun sets in your area.
At that time, the program automatically dims your screen and blocks the blue light. It happens gradually, so you may not even notice it happening.
As the sun sets outside, the sun “sets” in your screen as well, by blocking out the blue light and giving the screen a little more yellow-ish shade.
The theory is that removing the blue light allows your pineal gland to produce melatonin to help you get more tired at night, which should make falling asleep easier.
If falling asleep at night is a problem in your life, I suggest you try the software. It’s free and unobtrusive.
You can easily disable it temporarily if you’re watching p.. doing color sensitive work on your computer at night.
If you also dim the lights in your house, turn down the music and abstain from caffeine late in the day, then chances are you’ll have an easier time falling asleep.
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