Ashok Gupta says screen addiction is the biggest modern threat to sleep. Evening screens reduce total sleep time, keep your nervous system too aroused, and suppress melatonin by mimicking daylight. He recommends a nightly wind-down routine with a fixed bedtime.
What do you think is the biggest addiction that is causing poor sleep in modern times? You might say sugar. Well, that's certainly an addiction as well, but the biggest one affecting our sleep is addiction to our screens. It's so tempting, isn't it, to binge on a Netflix series late into the evening or even the night, and spend mindless hours on social media serving cat and dog videos. The key problem is our phones, our tablets. They're just too good, they're too entertaining. And many of us are sleep deprived because we're spending too much time on our screens late into the evening. There are three main effects that screens have on our sleep. We get less sleep overall. Also, our nervous system can still be revved up late into the evening, which affects the depth of our sleep. And thirdly, the bright light that comes from the screen that tells our sleep hormones that it's daytime instead of night. So this is an incredible opportunity to overcome another epidemic by overriding our temptation to disrupt our sleep with screens. Perhaps we can set a wind down routine for ourselves, just like we do with children. Starting at a specific time every night, making sure we get into bed, lights out at a certain time.
