I hate to come at you from the heart of darkness, but you must turn the love-love relationship you have with your phone into a love-hate situation right now. Your phone has become a limb ¦ you check it during face-to-face conversations with actual humans ¦ you feel achy all over when you leave it at home for an hour.
If that’s how you live, no judgment here. Still, maybe you could conjure up some hate for that sexy beast. Because it’s keeping you up at night. We’ll explain why and also talk about how to break that nasty habit and create a good sleep cocoon to help you get back to sleeping soundly.
Smartphones can be bad for you because the blue light, emitted by LED lights from all manner of electronic screens, stimulates your brain.
At night, it tells your brain that it’s still daytime. It throws your body’s clock, its circadian rhythm, out of sync. It makes it harder to fall asleep and get restful, restorative sleep. It puts you at risk for scary diseases like depression, diabetes and heart disease.
The CDC says one-third of all Americans are sleep deprived. It’s no stretch to say that the Cult of Smartphone in society today robs us blind of something we need to survive.
It’s not all lost. You can work to limit your exposure to blue light at night:
We often reach for our phone without giving thought to why we need it. We’re bored. We’re angry. We’re tired. We’re used to fondling that lovely case. It feels so right in our hand. Oooh, look at the pretty colours!
People, phone fondling is a habit. You can break it for the sake of your health.
Start by picking up an actual book or magazine‘you know, made out of paper, cardboard, glue, ink’at bedtime. Reading with the light illuminating the page from above is much less jarring for your brain than blue light shooting up at you from your phone.
Now take a long look at where you sleep. If your phone isn’t the only thing keeping you up at night, take a look at your sleeping structure. If you’re waking up sore or in pain or if you’re contorting your body all night to avoid lumps, you’ve probably been sleeping on the same mattress for 10 years too long. Sleep is integral to our overall health and wellness. It’s important we protect it.
Again, It’s OK to hate your phone a little bit. It’ll force you to break bad phone habits. It’ll help you do the work to develop good sleep habits. That’s what we’re trying to improve in the first place.