Updated 1/8/2021 - Light it up...if you want to ruin your sleep!

For as long as I can remember I have hated walking into dimly lit houses. It seemed that older people, in particular, seemed to like low lights. I swore that when I got older I would have a brightly lit house. And I have had a brightly lit house.

Until now.

When the government forced us to switch from the old incandescent lights, killing a thriving American industry, moving us to made-in-China LED bulbs, I bought every incandescent bulb I could find. High wattage. Yes, I'm a rebel.

I had read about the issues with LED and was really aggravated that our government was mandating a switch. I dug in my heels and refused to change. As with many stances like that one they fade over time, especially when it became impossible to find incandescent bulbs and my supply was running low. I broke down and used one of the free bulbs our electric company had sent trying to entice us to switch.

As I am a ceramic artist and a painter lighting is super important to me. At some point, I discovered daylight LED bulbs and fell in love with them. My art looks soooo much better in daylight and it's soooo much better when working to have those bright lights. I changed out every light in the studio to daylight LED bulbs. I became a convert.

Bright daylight LED bulbs started replacing all of my bulbs. Take that old people...no dim lighting for me, ha ha!

Then I upgraded my Fitbit and started tracking my sleep. Yowzer. I was getting zip when it came to deep sleep and my REM was hit or miss.

I started delving into how to sleep better. My typical pattern was to fall asleep fairly easily but would wake up somewhere between 2 to 3 and wander in and out of light sleep for a few hours before dragging my butt out of bed.

The more I learned about sleep the more I learned about the impact of light. In particular, our light bulbs. Fluorescent, incandescent, and LED. I discovered blue light blockers. I read posts and info by Dave Asprey, Matthew Walker, and others on how to get better sleep and the issues with computers, phones, tablets, and the various light spectrums.

The irony of my commitment to have bright lights is it turns out that those very same lights are wreaking havoc with our sleep cycles. Poor sleep is a huge contributor to dementia in later life. I guess maybe quite by accident past generations may have been saving their brains to some degree, unbeknownst to them.

We are "made" (ala evolution) to wake up with sunlight and sleep when it gets dark. With the advent of gas, then electric lighting we started blowing our sleep circuits. Over time we have become proud of sleeping shorter lengths. We brag that we'll sleep when we die, not realizing that we'll die sooner and more miserably if we don't get proper sleep.

If you go camping, away from lights and civilization, and don't take any electronics I bet you'll find you go to sleep just like cavemen. Unless you camp like I used to with adult beverages and groups of partying friends!

Now as I type I am wearing prescription blue-blocking glasses. I have Night Shift, a free app, on my phone and tablet. I have f.lux on my laptop. I get up every morning and try to get some sunlight to start my circadian clock ticking correctly, building toward a good night of sleep. I exercise in the morning or early afternoon to avoid revving up my system before bedtime.

I am currently researching melatonin. One expert says not to bother, another says it's great. One says it's needed for our brains, not just sleep. Another says we need it when we reach a certain age as our production slows down. The information and suggestions regarding melatonin are all over the place. I'm working on another post with what I'm learning. Stay tuned.

Sadly, all the things I have been doing to help my sleep haven't helped a bit. (Note: 1/8/2021 --- turns out some of the things have helped. See the bullet points below to see the changes I've made.) I'm going for a sleep study next week. I do not have high hopes as they started and ended the conversation with a push for a C-Pap machine. I don't snore. I have used the SnoreLab app for many nights and not even registered. I mentioned trying other things...even different types of sleep devices...and they harped on C-Pap. I've decided they get a kick-back. But I'm still going for the study. (Sleep study sucked, worthless...see my posts on it for details.)

On the lighting front, I have switched the bedroom lights to blue blockers so I can read at night. I added a few blue-blocking night lights to areas where we wander at night, like the bathroom. I have covered or disconnected every tiny light in the house.

Here's one story that stuck with me as I investigated sleep...someone did a sleep study and during the person's deep sleep they took a tiny penlight and shined it on the back of their knee. It took them out of deep sleep. Turns out our entire body is a light sensor. I think Matthew Walker is the one that talked about that one, will post a link if I find it again.

Here are all the other things I'm doing to try and get a good night of deep and REM sleep. BTW, the C-Pap pushing sleep doc wasn't interested in anything, including the fact that I have a short-sleep gene and another that indicates I might have trouble with deep sleep.

My attempts to get better sleep, in addition to the ones mentioned above, include:

• No caffeine after 10 a.m.
• A cocktail of supplements half an hour to an hour before bedtime:
• 1mg time-release melatonin at bedtime
• LUNA tablets without melatonin
• 2 teaspoons of CALM (magnesium) in a tiny amount of water
•  I have added some GABA, turmeric and 5-HTP to my nightly pill-popping regime
• 1/8/2021 Update --- I have ditched GABA and melatonin as they weren't helping. I now add ashwagandha, shankpushpi and collagen to my nightly herbal tea. I no longer drink the Golden Milk (next on the bullet list). I drink my tea at least 3 hours before bedtime to avoid the middle-of-the-night bathroom trips. My deep and REM sleep lengths are improving.
  
• I tried Golden Milk --- turmeric, almond milk, cinnamon, a touch of vanilla...and I added Shankpushpi which is supposed to help your brain and with sleep. It didn't seem to have any effect on my deep sleep. However, I did start using the bathroom more in the middle of the night...sigh...so I moved it back to 3 hours before bedtime. Drinking it that far from sleep-time doesn't help at all for sleep but the ingredients are great for my brain so the Golden Milk is a keeper.
• I don't eat at least 3 hours before bedtime, usually longer
• I stop using my tablet, phone, and computer an hour or two before bed
• I have a regular schedule, hit the bed between 9:30 - 10 every night
• All of my bedroom windows are covered with dark sheets (they are a strange shape so I can't use the standard light-blocking shades)
• I have the head of my bed elevated. That was initially to avoid acid reflux but it turns out that's also good for your sleep.
• I have tried binaural beats (tried the Atmosphere and BrainAurum apps); that didn't have any kind of impact on my sleep. 
• I use the Insight Timer app for sleep meditations. Some of them do help get me back to sleep when I wake up in the night but they have bright white backgrounds and that little pop of light is enough to light up the "time to get up" part of my brain. I now keep my blue-blocking glasses next to the bed and have learned to put them on before going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, grabbing my phone for the sleep app, etc.
• I have a white and pink noise machine that does seem to help
• If I wake up in the middle of the night and can't easily get back to sleep I read a book. With a blue-blocking light. The suggestion is that you get out of bed and go somewhere else to read, but I have found that if I do that, then head back to bed, I wake up. So I read in bed and it puts me back to sleep, turns my brain off just fine.
  

I joke that I'd stand on my head for an hour before bed if I thought it would help me sleep. Please don't tell me it would as I hate the idea of standing on my head!

Thus far all of my efforts have failed. But I have learned a lot. Especially about lighting. I'm going to continue to switch out the lights in the house. I want dimmers on all of them so I can turn them down at night.

We have fluorescent lighting in the kitchen, pantry and laundry room. Those have to go. That's a big issue though as it'll cost a chunk of change to switch them out. Fluorescent lights are the worst of the worst...so, for now, I am turning them off a few hours before bed.

Blue Lights:

https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/blue-light-detrimental-to-healthy-sleep
https://www.allaboutvision.com/cvs/blue-light.htm
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/blue-light-has-a-dark-side

Binaural beats:
https://www.binauralbeatsmeditation.com/the-science/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sleep-newzzz/201810/how-can-binaural-beats-help-you-sleep-better
https://www.healthline.com/health/binaural-beats