Junk Light and How It May Be Interfering with Your Sleep, Energy and Mood with Jenna Keane of TrueDark

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What is junk light and how does it affect the quality of our sleep? What does it have to do with our overall mood and energy? TrueDark CEO Jenna Keane talks about what people can do about junk light in their own homes and in their own lives.

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Topics Discussed in this Episode:

How blue light and green light interfere with our sleep
How TrueDark came to be
The problems that people experience from too much blue light exposure
What happens in your brain when you wear blue light blocking glasses
The types of glasses that block blue light
What the HumanCharger does
Strategies to mitigate jet lag
How to help stop the junk light in your environment

Key Takeaways:

The concept of blue light being bad for humans was actually discovered back in the ’70s by NASA, and the issue was that you can get too much blue light from things like electronics.
Blue light tells your body that it’s too bright outside, so the body doesn’t recognize that it’s already night time and you end up not getting enough sleep.
Studies show that there’s a sensor in our eyes called melanopsin that is sensitive not only to blue light but also to green light.
If you want to go to sleep quickly and stay asleep and sleep deeply, blocking both blue and green lights an hour or two before sleep is really, really important.
When you block the blue and green light, you see the world through red. And when your body has these lights being filtered, it thinks it’s dark.
Blue light is not necessarily bad for you. But getting too much blue light at the wrong time of the day or in the evening, that’s what can have a negative impact on your sleep and your health overall.
We don’t just absorb light through our eyes, we also absorb light through our skin.

Action Steps:

Wind down at night by putting on the blue light blocking glasses.
Aim to get a solid two to three hours of natural sunlight outside, ideally in the morning.
Consider using a HumanCharger to increase your energy levels.
Make sure that your sleeping area or your bedroom is totally dark by using blackout curtains.
If you have an electric clock in your bedroom, unplug it, or choose one that has red lettering and that is dimmable and dim it as low as you can.
Before bed, keep the lights out, or get a lamp that has a red bulb.
Use halogens or incandescent lights instead of fluorescent lights in your house.

Jenna said:

“When you have companies like Apple and Samsung and Android making filters to tone down the amount of blue that’s in their products at night because they recognize that it’s a problem, that says that this is a universal, international problem.”

“Everyone has different reactions to light. Some people are super light sensitive, others are not. But when it comes down to it, sleep is a universal thing… If you have a challenge in your life, start with your sleep because it impacts everything else.”

Thanks for listening!

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Links to things we discuss in the show: