Tag: Body clock

Using Light The Right Way To Improve Sleep

At this time and age, we have countless tech contrivances to make our life easier in general. You may spend extra in procuring them but they definitely lighten workload whether at home or in the office. Unfortunately, too much technology can get in the way of your good health. Too much distraction makes people stay up all night trying to catch the latest episodes of whatever they are watching and scrolling their social media newsfeed for hours to get updated on all the latest news or to catch up with family and friends even if they are miles and miles away. Tech devices emit light especially blue ones and they disrupt sleep. It is no wonder now why many people constantly complain about lacking in sleep because their new hobby has definitely been upgraded and it has turned into an obsession.

However, is it possible to use the same technology in addressing sleep issues and hopefully allow you to sleep better at night for your sake? There is a light therapy that can possibly solve this dilemma. It might not be 100% right away, but definitely baby steps in that direction. Teens and the younger population are the first to reap its benefits especially that they are the ones who are more glued to their gadgets and have been silently battling sleeping issues on their own. Light is used to correct the body’s natural clock so you are naturally oriented to the normal sleep-wake cycle again on your specific time zone and can be used in conjunction with melatonin pills.

To treat this mistiming, he said he prescribes light therapy, where patients sit before a bright light for prescribed periods of time, as it is the most “powerful” way to retrain the body’s internal clock.

Shapiro said that sometimes he brings his subjects into his lab for a body clock test. While not covered by OHIP, Shapiro said the test gives the most definitive diagnosis of body clock functioning.

For six hours, from 6 p.m. to midnight, subjects sit in a dark room. Once an hour, remaining in the dark, they chew a cotton ball and spit it into a tube.

From the saliva extracted, staff measure the melatonin level and plot it on a graph, to show when it rises. If it rises too late in the evening, that can indicate there’s a body clock problem.

(Via: https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/analysis/2017/12/18/young-adults-sleep-issues-often-helped-by-light-therapy.html)

Sleep clinics can help patients with this light therapy as it often is a diagnostic procedure where patients are asked to sit in a dark for six hours and data is extracted from them through their saliva in order to measure melatonin levels. The result can give doctors a better understanding as to why you are suffering from sleep issues and they will be able to formulate a better medical management of your condition that is more tailor-fit to support your needs.

FUTURISTIC glasses — designed to combat sleep deprivation — are in high demand.

Developed at Flinders University and manufactured at Lonsdale, they direct blue and green light into the eyes to help adjust the body clock and improve sleep.

Professor Leon Lack and Dr Helen Wright from the university started researching and developing the device in 1987.

Sales have continued to increase since the Re-Timer light therapy glasses were launched in 2012.

“We knew this would be useful for people flying across time zones … and for some people with sleep disorders,” Prof Lack said.

(Via: http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/business/jobs/retimer-antisleep-deprivation-glasses-are-made-by-a-former-automotive-manufacturer/news-story/4e644360eb576f34b1af9f6c5b591a30)

It’s really amazing what technology can achieve when used right. There are numerous valuable resources you can tap right now to help you deal with and manage a lot of your issues especially the ones concerning your health. A surgery is not always done first if the condition can be corrected by something else, in this case, a futuristic glass. You were able to diagnose your sleeping woe through light therapy and now it is time to get back on your lost sleep and overcome sleep deprivation. Like how the light therapy takes a closer look at how your body clock works, these futuristic glasses are designed to adjust your circadian rhythm by emitting blue and green light. People who are always on the go and travel across various time zones can benefit from this glasses so sleep would now be the lease of their worries.

But if your problem is sleep apnea, you need so much more than this glasses. For starters, you need a diagnosis for it so your doctor can take the right course of action in treating your condition. More often than not, CPAP is recommended while you always have a choice to try something more convenient to use like an anti-snoring mouthpiece, examples of which are https://snoringmouthpiecereview.org/zquiet and https://snoringmouthpiecereview.org/snorerx that corrects the problem with your anatomy and not only gets rid of the snoring but reduces the deadly breathing gaps in your slumber.