Blue Light At Night? Save More Than Just Your Sleep!

It’s Life Hack Saturday here at 10almonds, and in today’s issue we have:

• Flexibility in under 10mins/week? The science says yes!

• Beating The Insomnia Blues

  • Sleep Hygiene

  • About That Darkness

  • Blue Light at Night, it’s Quite a Blight

    • …because there are serious impacts on more than just your sleep

  • Lights-Out For Your Brain Too

• What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

The Science of Suppleness!

Did you know that you can significantly improve your flexibility with less than 10 minutes of effort per week?

It sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? But there are lots of studies to support it. The important part is how you spend those ten minutes!

You might want to pencil in the first 5 mins (and 12 seconds) now, for Olivia’s video. She really knows her stuff, and in just a few minutes, you can enjoy the benefits of it too!

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

Studies cited in the video:

1. Acute effect of different time periods of passive static stretching on the hamstring flexibility

2. Passive force, angle, and stiffness changes after stretching of hamstring muscles

3. The effect of time and frequency of static stretching on flexibility of the hamstring muscles

4. Current concepts in muscle stretching for exercise and rehabilitation

5. The relation between stretching typology and stretching duration: the effects on range of motion

6. Viscoelastic properties of muscle-tendon units. The biomechanical effects of stretching

😵‍💫 MAIN FEATURE

Beating The Insomnia Blues

You previously asked us about recipes for insomnia (or rather, recipes/foods to help with easing insomnia). We delivered!

But we also semi-promised we'd cover a bit more of the general management of insomnia, because while diet's important, it's not everything.

Sleep Hygiene

Alright, you probably know this first bit, but we'd be remiss if we didn't cover it before moving on:

• No caffeine or alcohol before bed

  • Ideally: none earlier either, but if you enjoy one or the other or both, we realize an article about sleep hygiene isn't going to be what changes your mind

• Fresh bedding

  • At the very least, fresh pillowcase(s). While washing and drying an entire bedding set constantly may be arduous and wasteful of resources, it never hurts to throw your latest pillowcase(s) in with each load of laundry you happen to do.

• Warm bed, cool room = maximum coziness

• Dark room. Speaking of which...

About That Darkness…

When we say the room should be dark, we really mean it:

• Not dark like "evening mood lighting", but actually dark.

• Not dark like "in the pale moonlight", but actually dark.

• Not dark like "apart from the light peeking under the doorway", but actually dark.

• Not dark like "apart from a few LEDs on electronic devices that are on standby or are charging", but actually dark.

There are many studies about the impact of blue light on sleep, but here’s one as an example.

If blue light with wavelength between 415 nm and 455 nm (in the visible spectrum) hits the retina, melatonin (the sleep hormone) will be suppressed.

The extent of the suppression is proportional to the amount of blue light. This means that there is a difference between starting at an "artificial daylight" lamp, and having the blue LED of your phone charger showing... but the effect is cumulative.

And it gets worse:

❝This high energy blue light passes through the cornea and lens to the retina causing diseases such as dry eye, cataract, age-related macular degeneration, even stimulating the brain, inhibiting melatonin secretion, and enhancing adrenocortical hormone production, which will destroy the hormonal balance and directly affect sleep quality.❞

Read it in full: Research progress about the effect and prevention of blue light on eyes

See also: Age-related maculopathy and the impact of blue light hazard 

So, what this means, if we value our health, is:

• Switch off, or if that's impractical, cover the lights of electronic devices. This might be as simple as placing your phone face-down rather than face-up, for instance.

• Invest in blackout blinds/curtains (per your preference). Serious ones, like these ← see how they don’t have to be black to be blackout! You don’t have to sacrifice style for function 😎

• If you can't reasonably do the above, consider a sleep mask. Again, a good one. Not the kind you were given on a flight, or got free with some fluffy handcuffs. We mean a full-blackout sleep mask that’s designed to be comfortable enough to sleep in, like this one.

• If you need to get up to pee or whatever, do like a pirate and keep one eye covered/closed. That way, it'll remain unaffected by the light. Pirates did it to retain their night vision when switching between being on-deck or below, but you can do it to halve the loss of melatonin.

Lights-Out For Your Brain Too

You can have all the darkness in the world and still not sleep if your mind is racing thinking about:

• your recent day

• your next day

• that conversation you wish had gone differently

• what you really should have done when you were 18

• how you would go about fixing your country's socio-political and economic woes if you were in charge

• Etc.

We wrote about how to hit pause on all that, in a previous edition of 10almonds.

Check it out: The Off-Button For Your Brain—How to "just say no" to your racing mind (this trick really works)

Sweet dreams!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat - by Aubrey Gordon

There are books aplenty to encourage and help you to lose weight. This isn't one of those.

There are also books aplenty to encourage and help you to accept yourself and your body at the weight you are, and forge self-esteem. This isn't one of those, either—in fact, it starts by assuming you already have that.

There are fair arguments for body neutrality, and fat acceptance. Very worthy also is the constant fight for bodily sovereignty.

These are worthy causes, but they're for the most-part not what our author concerns herself with here. Instead, she cares for a different and very practical goal: fat justice.

In a world where you may be turned away from medical treatment if you are over a certain size, told to lose half your bodyweight before you can have something you need, she demands better. The battle extends further than healthcare though, and indeed to all areas of life.

Ultimately, she argues, any society that will disregard the needs of the few because they're a marginal demographic, is a society that will absolutely fail you if you ever differ from the norm in some way.

All in all, an important (and for many, perhaps eye-opening) book to read if you are fat, care about fat people, are a person of any size, or care about people in general.

Pick Up Your Copy of “What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat”, on Amazon Today!

Wishing you good rest and healthy productivity,

The 10almonds Team