Hi. I’m Dana Obleman. Welcome to this week’s video blog. Today, I want to talk about something called blue light. You might’ve heard a lot about it recently in the press. It’s getting a lot of buzz. It’s the part of the light spectrum that can interfere with melatonin production.

Melatonin, a popular buzzword as of late, is what our body secretes when darkness sets in. It’s a sleepy hormone. It helps us get ready for the night that’s before us. What can happen when we have lots of lights on in the house is it can prevent melatonin production. It can slow it down. It can inhibit it and I believe that that’s one of the reasons why so many of us have sleep issues.

I want to talk about children because that my passion. For a lot of children who are watching TV right before bed, playing on their computers, looking at iPads, those electronic devices give out very high frequency blue light on the spectrum.

My advice would be that you have a good look at how much screen time your child is having before bed. I am not a fan at any age of having TV time in your bedtime routine. I believe that the TV, all electronic devices should be turned off after the dinner hour. That’s the rule in my house.

An hour before at least, you should start dimming the lights. You should turn off screens. You should not have any kind of television watching in your child’s bedtime routine.

A lot of people tell me though that their child relaxes in front of the TV, that it’s a great wind down activity that they do and I know that’s what it looks like but the truth of the matter is it’s not relaxing.

It’s very stimulating and you’re most likely doing the opposite of what you’re hoping for. It’s not a relaxing for the body because you’re sitting quietly, but for the brain it’s very stimulating. If it’s interfering or preventing the melatonin needed for your child to sleep well, it’s not a surprise to me that some children have trouble settling down and getting to sleep.

I want to tell you about a cool website that I found. It’s called lowbluelight.com. They sell all kinds of really cool devices that help prevent blue light from emitting. For example, they have a screen cover for your iPad, for your home computer that blocks the blue light. You can still see. You can still do your reading or watching TV, it prevents the blue light from getting into your eyeballs which is causing the problem.

You can wear amber colored glasses. They have amber colored night lights which I would encourage everybody to have a look at. If you’ve got a child who’s having any kind of getting to sleep issues. It’s not the getting to sleep. I want you to think about this for your own sleep health as well. [coughs] Excuse me.

If melatonin is not being produced properly, it might interfere with the night sleep that you have. If you’re like me and you crash pretty much the minute your head hits the pillow but then around three o’clock in the morning, that’s when the problem set in.

I would encourage you to have a look at your environment right before bed. For yourself, try an hour before, turn off screens and dim lights and it might even be two hours before for some people. It depends but experiment with it and give it a try and see if it improves the quality of your nighttime sleep and for your children.

Thanks for watching today. Sleep well!