You’ve probably heard by now that you shouldn’t be looking at screens too close to bedtime. Not only can they be unnecessarily stimulating before bed, keeping your brain awake long after your body should be sleeping, but the blue light your computers, phones, and tablets emit also affects your melatonin production, and therefore the quality of your sleep. And if the quality of your sleep is poor, then you’re at a higher risk for obesity, heart disease, and various chronic conditions.

 

Experts recommend shutting off devices, as well as dimming any bright blue-white lights, at least an hour before you plan to get into bed…but that’s not always possible. Maybe you needed to send a few last emails before bed. Maybe you wanted to be sure to send your friend the perfect happy birthday gif before you forgot. Maybe someone is just wrong on the internet. We’re pretty attached to our screens, and all the good advice and self-awareness in the world probably isn’t going to change that very much. But we can control the damage.

 

Special blue-light-blocking glasses do exactly what it sounds like: they keep the blue light that negatively affects our sleep from hitting our retinas while allowing us to continue using our devices, with reduced (if not fully eliminated) side effects. 

 

Today, your body is still attuned to this internal clock. In the morning, bright, blue-light-rich sunlight signals to your body that it's time to wake up. At night, as the sun sets, darkness should signal to your body that it's time to sleep. The problem is that most people living in developed countries no longer go to sleep when the sun sets. Instead, we turn on LED lights, computers, televisions, tablets and smartphones, all of which expose us to varying amounts of blue light at a time of day when there's supposed to be next to none. Your body is understandably confused as a result. It's now becoming clear that one of the least expensive and simplest ways to protect your body's internal rhythm, and thereby support healthy sleep and a lowered risk of many chronic diseases, is to wear blue-light-blocking glasses not just at night but anytime you are exposed to artificial lights.

 

1. They can reduce eye strain. Working with a computer or smartphone all day can cause problems ranging from neck problems to carpal tunnel syndrome, and it probably won’t surprise you to learn that spending a long time staring at a screen can cause eye strain. One of the reasons for this is the bright blue light they emit. Using blue light blockers will reduce eye fatigue and the things that come along with it, like headaches and blurred vision.
2. They might slow or prevent age-related macular degeneration. More research still needs to be done on this, but some preliminary studies indicate that, because blue light penetrates your eye all the way to the retina, blue-light blocking glasses can mitigate damage that will cause problems later in life.
3. They’ll help you sleep better. What, you thought a post on Sleepopolis wasn’t going to talk about sleep? Exposure to too much blue light too late in the evening can have a serious effect on your circadian rhythms by slowing or completely stopping the production of melatonin—the chemical in your brain that tells your body it’s time to go to bed. Experts recommend turning off all devices that give off blue light at least two hours before bed, but we all know that’s not always possible, so to avoid the negative side-effects of late-night blue light exposure, blue light blockers are a must.