Over the past couple months I’ve been finding myself more and more tired, and having more fatigue throughout the day due to a lack of sleep. I told the psychiatrist that I toss and turn all night, and that is difficult for me to fall asleep and stay asleep. She then asked me a series of questions like, “Do you exercise late?”, “Do I eat healthy”, etc. She then asked what my nightly routine was before falling asleep. I had to think about it for a while, thinking there was nothing out of the ordinary, and then I told her.
I’ll turn on the T.V., if there’s nothing on, I’ll go to my laptop, download the most recent episode of my favorite T.V. series and watch it for an hour and then try to sleep. More recently I’ve been noticing myself alluding to the laptop as a means for the late night entertainment because I don’t have to watch the commercials. After I told her, her face lit up and she told me she knew exactly what it was.
She said she’s been seeing this problem in a lot of her clients. She said there has been recent research that show our brains perceive the brightness of the screen on our iPads, iPhone, and laptops as the same as daylight. So, when we lie down after being tired from a long day of work, our bodies prepare for sleep, however, once we become fixated on the bright screens for such an extended period of time, we are actually tricking our brains into thinking it’s day time out. She says she sees this problem frequently in her older patients who use the kindles and iPads to read their books. She recommended that her patients switch back to paperback books and in every case, there problem was solved.