paleo diet food list- is your iPod causing insomnia?

It is recently revealed, what the blue light from our screen really does to our bodies? Do you leave your PC, MAC OR TV on in the bedroom as you drift off to sleep each night? Millions of people do it without understanding the dramatic health consequences.

These paleo diet foods wonderful devices change our lives are all the rage, yet they all do something which causes harm in humans. The blue light they emit impairs restful sleep. How? Exposure prevents the release of melatonin which is an essential hormone associated with sleep.

Unfortunately, blue light not only suppresses melatonin production and sleep. It is considered carcinogenic pollution. A recent marine study shows blue light correlates with higher cancer rates. A lack of melatonin is linked to higher rates of breast, ovarian and prostrate cancers, while blocking blue rays with amber glasses is linked to lower cancer rates.

So not only is sleep impacted…

·       It also negatively influences thermoregulation, blood pressure and glucose homeostasis.

·       Exposure significantly impacts your own mood.

·       Lower melatonin in mice is linked with higher rates of depression.

·       And blue light exposure may be playing a role in the higher incidence of cataracts and muscular degeneration seen today.

Now you might ask me how your sleep is compromised. Ordinarily, the pineal gland, a pea size organ in the brain, begins to release melatonin a couple of hours before you regular bedtime. The hormone is no sleeping pill, but it does reduce alertness, making sleep more inviting.

However, light- particularly of the blue variety- can keep the pineal gland from releasing melatonin, thus warding off sleepiness. You don’t have to be staring directly at a television or computer screen. If enough blue lights hit the eye, the gland can stop releasing melatonin. So the health consequences can be chronic and terminal.

Not only does this impact melatonin, a growing body of evidence suggest that a resynchronization of circadian rhythms plays significant role in various tumural diseases, diabetes, obesity and depression.

So light serves as a cue, but how? It has long been known that the retina contains two types of photoreceptor or light sensors- rod and cones. The cones allow us to see colors, while the ultrasensitive rods are used for night vision, motion detection and peripheral vision.

Surprisingly, neither of them is the body’s primarily tool for detecting light and darkness nor synchronizing our circadian clocks. There is a third kind of sensor in our eyes called intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells or ip RGC.

These relatively crude sensors are unable to pick up on low levels of light from a dim night light but sluggishly signal light changes. IpRGC are the body’s way of sending ambient light information to the master circadian clock, a huddle of nerve cells in the brain.

This clock makes the penal glands start and stop the secretion of melatonin. The ipRGC are most sensitive to blue light- that’s why blue light is fad for your sleep.

So now you know, there is hope. A recent study found that people who spent a week camping in the Rocky Mountains, exposed to only natural light and not electronic devices, had their circadian clocks re- synchronized with the rise and fall of the sun.

Interestingly, although there were only eight campers, they all reacted in the same way, whether they considered themselves early birds or night owls. Now the good news is that you DON’T have to give up your device there are other ways.

For instance, one way to counteract the effects of tablets blue light is a free app that automatically warms up the colors on your various screens to more reds and yellows at sunset and returns them to normal at sunrise.

The amount of light you need in order to see is lower than the amount of light you need to affect your melatonin. However, paleo diet foods avoiding blue light is just one piece of the puzzle in getting high quality sleep that leaves you refreshed , awake and energized and if you want to know about them then click here to download now.