[Music] mike what are you doing up man mike you all right mike you cool buddy mike is everything okay what's the matter mike mike you have a bad dream [Music] blue light that felt good first things first what's blue light well i have here on my white board demonstrated the different colors and the wavelengths attributed to each one of them now the longer the wavelength the less health effects you're actually going to see on your eye so red green above 550 you're not going to see as many health effects violet light may have heard of uv light that's when it starts getting dangerous and blue light is right on that same hinge but i also want to show you how the human eye works so you can understand how you even see these different colors right here you have the human eye the jordan it's not bad there's the optic nerve cornea pupil lens retina right here when the light comes in it goes through the eye goes right here to the retina and it hints i'm going to zoom in bam zoom in mode these photoreceptors these photoreceptors are what allow you to see color and there's four types of these photoreceptors three of them being cones one of them being rods the cones are red green and blue and they allow you to see color in the daytime rods allow you to see at night without any color the way that i actually memorize this in med school is c for cones c for color rods for dark dr what am i a doctor you're a quick learner i love let's talk blue light and your health the most evidence we have in the way that blue light affects your health is through our biological clock also known as our circadian rhythm blue light actually suppresses melatonin that's a hormone that's released in our brains to make us sleepy to help us fall asleep at night and stay asleep during the night now if you're exposing yourself to a lot of blue light at night immediately before going to sleep that can make you less sleepy as you can imagine that's problematic all different types of light can actually suppress your melatonin hormone that's why in all my sleep videos i recommend keeping it as dim as possible before bedtime but that being said harvard actually studied and compared blue light to green light and they found blue light suppressed melatonin almost twice as much as green light and shifted your circadian rhythm twice as much as compared to green light three hours to one and a half hours now that's not all bad news when you wake up in the morning the first thing i tell you guys is to open up your shades the reason is the sunshine that has a lot of blue light in it will actually suppress that melatonin hormone making you less sleepy more alert and resetting your circadian rhythm so you can fall asleep easier for the following night this actually brings up an interesting dilemma because as we're moving to become more energy efficient we're using more led lamps more fluorescent lights as opposed to the traditional incandescent light bulbs and while that's great for the environment that may come at a personal health cost so how do we balance this moving forward i think in the future we're gonna have lamps that release blue light but perhaps the coverings of the lamps can actually filter some of that blue light out unless we have a major innovation in the next five to ten years which can also be a possibility let's talk about a couple health conditions for your eyes where blue light is not necessarily the culprit starting off with eye strain digital eye strain also known as computer vision syndrome this happens when we're staring at a computer tv cell phone screen when you do that for a long period of time people tend to develop this eye strain this eye fatigue the real reason this occurs is from that intense focus that happens leading to muscle fatigue around your eye and also because when you're that focused you're not blinking as much and not blinking as much leads to more dryness which leads to irritation burning stinging and guess what i have a few tips for you on how to battle that eye strain one you want to be at least two feet away from your computer screen two if you're going to be staring at a computer screen for a really long period of time think about using eye lubricating drops and three this one's my all-time favorite 20 20 20 rule every 20 minutes you want to stare at a point that's 20 feet away for at least 20 seconds this will allow your eyes to relax the muscles to recover and for your focus to regain this is the most important step in preventing or treating digital eye strain macular degeneration this is the center portion of your retina and if you lose your macula if you have degeneration you actually lose the central part of your vision there's been some evidence linking uv and blue light exposure to the acceleration of age-related macular degeneration but here's what we actually found it takes an enormous amount of blue light to actually do damage to this part of your retina so if you stare at the sun where there's a tremendous amount of blue light absolutely you can cause yourself some damage but when we look at research and we see the amounts that you're getting from your screens it's a lot less and probably not enough to the degree to cause significant damage in fact when you compare blue light exposure from electronics to aging smoking being overweight cardiovascular disease high blood pressure the electronics are just a minimal risk and not something you should spend a lot of time thinking or worrying about so how do we protect ourselves from blue light affecting our ability to fall asleep and altering our biological clocks my recommendations actually fall in line with harvard public school of health first get rid of the screens at least two hours before bedtime maybe even three hours if you can two use dim lights before bedtime ideally red dim lights red lights are less likely to shift your circadian rhythm and affect your sleep three consider blue light blocking glasses if you have late shifts or have work to do at night researchers from the university of toronto actually studied this exact concept they broke up individuals into two groups the first who were exposed to bright light while wearing blue light blocking glasses the second group who were exposed to dim light without any glasses they found their melatonin levels were exactly the same further strengthening the concept that blue light actually suppresses your melatonin secretion you want to know the truth about acne and chocolate click here or if you want to know the truth about swallowing your gum click here was grandma right which one you're clicking on as always stay happy and healthy [Music]