Blue Light At Night? Save More Than Just Your Sleep!

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Beating The Insomnia Blues

You previously asked us about recipes for insomnia (or rather, recipes/foods to help with easing insomnia). We delivered!

But we also semi-promised we’d cover a bit more of the general management of insomnia, because while diet’s important, it’s not everything.

Sleep Hygiene

Alright, you probably know this first bit, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t cover it before moving on:

  • No caffeine or alcohol before bed
    • Ideally: none earlier either, but if you enjoy one or the other or both, we realize an article about sleep hygiene isn’t going to be what changes your mind
  • Fresh bedding
    • At the very least, fresh pillowcase(s). While washing and drying an entire bedding set constantly may be arduous and wasteful of resources, it never hurts to throw your latest pillowcase(s) in with each load of laundry you happen to do.
  • Warm bed, cool room = maximum coziness
  • Dark room. Speaking of which…

About That Darkness…

When we say the room should be dark, we really mean it:

  • Not dark like “evening mood lighting”, but actually dark.
  • Not dark like “in the pale moonlight”, but actually dark.
  • Not dark like “apart from the light peeking under the doorway”, but actually dark.
  • Not dark like “apart from a few LEDs on electronic devices that are on standby or are charging”, but actually dark.

There are many studies about the impact of blue light on sleep, but here’s one as an example.

If blue light with wavelength between 415 nm and 455 nm (in the visible spectrum) hits the retina, melatonin (the sleep hormone) will be suppressed.

The extent of the suppression is proportional to the amount of blue light. This means that there is a difference between starting at an “artificial daylight” lamp, and having the blue LED of your phone charger showing… but the effect is cumulative.

And it gets worse:

❝This high energy blue light passes through the cornea and lens to the retina causing diseases such as dry eye, cataract, age-related macular degeneration, even stimulating the brain, inhibiting melatonin secretion, and enhancing adrenocortical hormone production, which will destroy the hormonal balance and directly affect sleep quality.❞

Read it in full: Research progress about the effect and prevention of blue light on eyes

See also: Age-related maculopathy and the impact of blue light hazard

So, what this means, if we value our health, is:

  • Switch off, or if that’s impractical, cover the lights of electronic devices. This might be as simple as placing your phone face-down rather than face-up, for instance.
  • Invest in blackout blinds/curtains (per your preference). Serious ones, like these ← see how they don’t have to be black to be blackout! You don’t have to sacrifice style for function
  • If you can’t reasonably do the above, consider a sleep mask. Again, a good one. Not the kind you were given on a flight, or got free with some fluffy handcuffs. We mean a full-blackout sleep mask that’s designed to be comfortable enough to sleep in, like this one.
  • If you need to get up to pee or whatever, do like a pirate and keep one eye covered/closed. That way, it’ll remain unaffected by the light. Pirates did it to retain their night vision when switching between being on-deck or below, but you can do it to halve the loss of melatonin.

Lights-Out For Your Brain Too

You can have all the darkness in the world and still not sleep if your mind is racing thinking about:

  • your recent day
  • your next day
  • that conversation you wish had gone differently
  • what you really should have done when you were 18
  • how you would go about fixing your country’s socio-political and economic woes if you were in charge
  • Etc.

We wrote about how to hit pause on all that, in a previous edition of 10almonds.

Check it out: The Off-Button For Your Brain—How to “just say no” to your racing mind (this trick really works)

Sweet dreams!

Don’t Forget…

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  • How To Set Anxiety Aside

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    How To Set Anxiety Aside

    We’ve talked previously about how to use the “release” method to stop your racing mind.

    That’s a powerful technique, but sometimes we need to be calm enough to use it. So first…

    Breathe

    Obviously. But, don’t underestimate the immediate power of focusing on your breath, even just for a moment.

    There are many popular breathing exercises, but here’s one of the simplest and most effective, “4–4 breathing”:

    • Breathe in for a count of four
    • Hold for a count four
    • Breathe out for a count of four
    • Hold for a count of four
    • Repeat

    Depending on your lung capacity and what you’re used to, it may be that you need to count more quickly or slowly to make it feel right. Experiment with what feels comfortable for you, but the general goal should breathing deeply and slowly.

    Identify the thing that’s causing you anxiety

    We’ve also talked previously about how to use the RAIN technique to manage difficult emotions, and that’s good for handling anxiety too.

    Another powerful tool is journaling.

    Read: How To Use Journaling to Challenge Anxious Thoughts

    If you don’t want to use any of those (very effective!) methods, that’s fine too—journaling isn’t for everyone.

    You can leverage some of the same benefits by simply voicing your worries, even to yourself:

    There’s an old folk tradition of “worry dolls”; these are tiny little dolls so small they can be kept in a pocket-size drawstring purse. Last thing at night, the user whispers their worries to the dolls and puts them back in their bag, where they will work on the person’s problem overnight.

    We’re a health and productivity newsletter, not a dealer of magic and spells, but you can see how it works, right? It gets the worries out of one’s head, and brings about a helpful placebo effect too.

    Focus on what you can control

    • Most of what you worry about will not happen.
    • Some of what you worry about may happen.
    • Worrying about it will not help.

    In fact, in some cases it may bring about what you fear, by means of the nocebo effect (like the placebo effect, but bad). Additionally, worrying drains your body and makes you less able to deal with whatever life does throw at you.

    So while “don’t worry; be happy” may seem a flippant attitude, sometimes it can be best. However, don’t forget the other important part, which is actually focusing on what you can control.

    • You can’t control whether your car will need expensive maintenance…
      • …but you can control whether you budget for it.
    • You can’t control whether your social event will go well or ill…
      • …but you can control how you carry yourself.
    • You can’t control whether your loved one’s health will get better or worse…
      • …but you can control how you’re there for them, and you can help them take what sensible precautions they may.

    …and so forth.

    Look after your body as well!

    Your body and mind are deeply reliant on each other. In this case, just as anxiety can drain your body’s resources, keeping your body well-nourished, well-exercised, and well-rested and can help fortify you against anxiety. For example, when it comes to diet, exercise, and sleep:

    Don’t know where to start? How about the scientifically well-researched, evidence-based, 7-minute workout?

    Check Out the Seven Minute Workout App (Android and iOS

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  • Darwin’s Bed Rest: Worthwhile Idea?

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    It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

    Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!

    In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

    As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

    So, no question/request too big or small

    ❝I recall that Charles Darwin (of Evolution fame) used to spend a day a month in bed in order to maintain his physical and psychological equilibrium. Do you see merit in the idea?❞

    Well, it certainly sounds wonderful! Granted, it may depend on what you do in bed :p

    Descartes did a lot of his work from bed (and also a surprising amount of it while hiding in an oven, but that’s another story), which was probably not so good for the health.

    As for Darwin, his health was terrible in quite a lot of ways, so he may not be a great model.

    However! Certainly taking a break is well-established as an important and healthful practice:

    How To Rest More Efficiently (Yes, Really)

    ❝I don’t like to admit it but I am getting old. Recently, I had my first “fall” (ominous word!) I was walking across some wet decking and, before I knew what had happened, my feet were shooting forwards, and I crashed to the ground. Luckily I wasn’t seriously damaged. But I was wondering whether you can give us some advice about how best to fall. Maybe there are some good videos on the subject? I would like to be able to practice falling so that it doesn’t come as such a shock when it happens!❞

    This writer has totally done the same! You might like our recent main feature on the topic:

    Fall Special

    …if you’ll pardon the pun

    Enjoy!

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  • Laugh Often, To Laugh Longest!

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    Putting The Abs Into Absurdity

    We’ve talked before about the health benefits of a broadly positive outlook on life:

    Optimism Seriously Increases Longevity!

    …and we’re very serious about it, but that’s about optimistic life views in general, and today we’re about not just keeping good humor in questionable circumstances, but actively finding good humor in the those moments—even when the moments in question might not be generally described as good!

    After all, laughter really can be the best medicine, for example:

    The effect of laughter yoga exercises on anxiety and sleep quality in patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease

    From the roots

    First a quick recap on de-toothing the psychological aspect of threats, no matter how menacing they may be:

    Hello, Emotions: Time For Radical Acceptance!

    …which we can then take a step further:

    What’s The Worst That Could Happen?

    Choose your frame

    Do you remember when that hacker hacked and publicized the US Federal no-fly list, after already hacking a nationwide cloud-based security camera company, getting access to more than 150,000 companies’ and private individuals’ security cameras, amongst various other cyber crimes, mostly various kinds of fraud and data theft?

    Imagine how she (age 21) must have felt, when being indicted. What do you suppose this hacker had to say for itself under such circumstances?

    ❝congress is investigating now 🙂

    but i stay silly :3 ❞

    ~ maia arson crimew

    …the latter half of which, usually rendered “but I stay silly” or “but we stay silly” has since entered popular Gen-Z parlance, usually after expressing some negative thing, often in a state of powerlessness.

    Which is an important life skill if powerlessness is something that is often likely.

    It’s important for many Gen-Zs with negligible life prospects economically; it’s equally important for 60-somethings getting cancer diagnoses (statistically the most likely decade to find out one has cancer, by the way), and many other kinds of people younger, older, and in between.

    Because at the end of the day, we all start powerless and we all end powerless.

    Learned helplessness (two kinds)

    In psychology, “learned helplessness” occurs when a person or creature gives up after learning that all and any attempts to resist a Bad Thing™ fail, perhaps even badly. A lab rat may just shut down and sit there getting electroshocked, for example. A person subjected to abuse may stop trying to improve their situation, and just go with the path of least resistance.

    But, there’s another kind, wherein someone in a position of absolute powerlessness not only makes their peace with that, but also, decides that the one thing the outside world can’t control, is how they take it. Like the hacker we mentioned earlier.

    Sometimes the gallows humor is even more literal, laughing at one’s own impending death. Not as a matter of bravado, but genuinely seeing the funny side.

    But how?

    Unfortunately, fortunately

    The trick here is to “find a silver lining” that is nowhere near enough to compensate for the bad thing—and it may even be worse! But that’s fine:

    Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to do the dishes before leaving for my vacation. Fortunately, I also forgot to turn the oven off, so the house burning down covered up my messy kitchen”

    Writer’s personal less drastic example: today I set my espresso machine to press me an espresso; it doesn’t have an auto-off and I got distracted and it overflowed everywhere; my immediate reaction was “Oh! I have been blessed with an abundance of coffee!”

    This kind of silly little thing, on a daily basis, builds a very solid habit for life that allows one to see the funny side in even the most absurd situations, even matters of life and death (can confirm: been there enough times personally—so far so good, still alive to find the remembered absurdity silly).

    The point is not to genuinely value the “silver lining”, because half the time it isn’t even one, really, and it is useless to pretend, in seriousness.

    But to pretend in silliness? Now we’re onto something, and the real benefit is in the laughs we had along the way.

    Because those worst moments? Are probably when we need it the most, so it’s good to get some practice in!

    Want more ways to find the funny and make it a life habit?

    We reviewed a good book recently:

    The Humor Habit: Rewire Your Brain To Stress Less, Laugh More, And Achieve More’er – by Paul Osincup

    Stay silly!

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  • Procrastination, and how to pay off the to-do list debt

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Procrastination, and how pay off the to-do list debt

    Sometimes we procrastinate because we feel overwhelmed by the mountain of things we are supposed to be doing. If you look at your to-do list and it shows 60 overdue items, it’s little wonder if you want to bury your head in the sand!

    “What difference does it make if I do one of these things now; I will still have 59 which feels as bad as having 60”

    So, treat it like you might a financial debt, and make a repayment plan. Now, instead of 60 overdue items today, you have 1/day for the next 60 days, or 2/day for the next 30 days, or 3/day for the next 20 days, etc. Obviously, you may need to work out whether some are greater temporal priorities and if so, bump those to the top of the list. But don’t sweat the minutiae; your list doesn’t have to be perfectly ordered, just broadly have more urgent things to the top and less urgent things to the bottom.

    Note: this repayment plan means having set repayment dates.

    Up front, sit down and assign each item a specific calendar date on which you will do that thing.

    This is not a deadline! It is your schedule. You’ll not try to do it sooner, and you won’t postpone it for later. You will just do that item on that date.

    A productivity app like ToDoist can help with this, but paper is fine too.

    What’s important here, psychologically, is that each day you’re looking not at 60 things and doing the top item; you’re just looking at today’s item (only!) and doing it.

    Debt Reduction/Cancellation

    Much like you might manage a financial debt, you can also look to see if any of your debts could be reduced or cancelled.

    We wrote previously about the “Getting Things Done” system. It’s a very good system if you want to do that; if not, no worries, but you might at least want to borrow this one idea….

    Sort your items into:

    Do / Defer / Delegate / Ditch

    • Do: if it can be done in under 2 minutes, do it now.
    • Defer: defer the item to a specific calendar date (per the repayment plan idea we just talked about)
    • Delegate: could this item be done by someone else? Get it off your plate if you reasonably can.
    • Ditch: sometimes, it’s ok to realize “you know what, this isn’t that important to me anymore” and scratch it from the list.

    As a last resort, consider declaring bankruptcy

    Towards the end of the dot-com boom, there was a fellow who unintentionally got his 5 minutes of viral fame for “declaring email bankruptcy”.

    Basically, he publicly declared that his email backlog had got so far out of hand that he would now not reply to emails from before the declaration.

    He pledged to keep on top of new emails only from that point onwards; a fresh start.

    We can’t comment on whether he then did, but if you need a fresh start, that can be one way to get it!

    In closing…

    Procrastination is not usually a matter of laziness, it’s usually a matter of overwhelm. Hopefully the above approach will help reframe things, and make things more manageable.

    Sometimes procrastination is a matter of perfectionism, and not starting on tasks because we worry we won’t do them well enough, and so we get stuck in a pseudo-preparation rut. If that’s the case, our previous main feature on perfectionism may help:

    Perfectionism, And How To Make Yours Work For You

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Exercising With Less Soreness!

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    An Ancient Sports Drink & Healing Potion, Now With Modern Science?

    Ginseng has many health benefits, we talked about 8 of them in this previous edition of 10almonds:

    Ginseng, Dopamine, & Exercise

    …but we’ve somehow never yet done a Monday’s Research Review for it! We must do one, one of these days. For now though, it’s Saturday’s Life Hacks, and we’re here with…

    Speeding up recovery after muscle damage

    We talked about this topic before too:

    Overdone It? How To Speed Up Recovery After Exercise

    …which gives very good advice (including some supplements that help), but was published before the latest science that we’re going to talk about today:

    A team of researchers all so very recently found that ginseng also reduces muscular fatigue and, importantly, hastens recovery of muscle damage caused by exercise.

    And that’s not all…

    ❝It should also be noted that, by reducing fatigue, taking ginseng on a regular basis may also help reduce the risk of injury, particularly in the case of muscles or ligaments, which can in turn improve athletic performance.❞

    This means that it can be taken regularly and prophylactically, as they found:

    ❝taking ginseng systematically for a long time can mitigate the response of the biological markers, mainly creatine kinase (CK) and interleukin 6 (IL-6), responsible for exercise-induced muscle damage and inflammation.❞

    You may be thinking “isn’t creatine good?” and yes, yes it is:

    Creatine: Very Different For Young & Old People

    …however, creatine kinase is not creatine. Creatine kinase (CK) is an enzyme that affects the creatine (to put it in few words, without getting into the fascinating biochemistry of this). Now, it’s necessary for us to have some CK (or else we wouldn’t be able to do what we need to with the creatine), but elevated levels often indicate some sort of problem going on:

    Approach to asymptomatic creatine kinase elevation

    …so ginseng keeping those things balanced is a good thing.

    The study

    We’ve talked a lot about the findings and what they mean, but if you’d like to read the paper for yourself, you can read it here:

    Effect of Ginseng Intake on Muscle Damage Induced by Exercise in Healthy Adults

    Where to get ginseng

    If you’d like to take ginseng as a supplement, then there are many ways to do so, with the most common being capsules or ginseng tea, which has an interesting and distinctive taste, and is very refreshing. Here are examples on Amazon, for your convenience:

    Enjoy!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • How To Boost Your Memory Immediately (Without Supplements)

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    How To Boost Your Memory (Without Supplements)

    While we do recommend having a good diet and taking advantage of various supplements that have been found to help memory, that only gets so much mileage. With that in mind…

    First, how good is your memory? Take This 2-Minute Online Test

    Now, that was a test of short term memory, which tends to be the most impactful in our everyday life.

    It’s the difference between “I remember the address of the house where I grew up” (long-term memory) and “what did I come to this room to do?” (short-term memory / working memory)

    First tip:

    When you want to remember something, take a moment to notice the details. You can’t have a madeleine moment years later if you wolfed down the madeleines so urgently they barely touched the sides.

    This goes for more than just food, of course. And when facing the prospect of age-related memory loss in particular, people tend to be afraid not of forgetting their PIN code, but their cherished memories of loved ones. So… Cherish them, now! You’ll struggle to cherish them later if you don’t cherish them now. Notice the little details as though you were a painter looking at a scene for painting. Involve more senses than just sight, too!

    If it’s important, relive it. Relive it now, relive it tomorrow. Rehearsal is important to memory, and each time you relive a memory, the deeper it gets written into your long-term memory until it becomes indelible to all but literal brain damage.

    Second tip:

    Tell the story of it to someone else. Or imagine telling it to someone else! (You brain can’t tell the difference)

    And you know how it goes… Once you’ve told a story a few times, you’ll never forget it later. Isn’t your life a story worth telling?

    Many people approach memory like they’re studying for a test. Don’t. Approach it like you’re preparing to tell a story, or give a performance. We are storytelling creatures at heart, whether or not we realize it.

    What do you do when you find yourself in a room and wonder why you went there? (We’ve all been there!) You might look around for clues, but if that doesn’t immediately serve, your fallback will be retracing your steps. Literally, physically, if needs be, but at least mentally. The story of how you got there is easier to remember than the smallest bit of pure information.

    What about when there’s no real story to tell, but we still need to remember something?

    Make up a story. Did you ever play the game “My granny went to market” as a child?

    If not, it’s a collaborative memory game in which players take turns adding items to a list, “My granny went to market and bought eggs”, My granny went to market and bought eggs and milk”, “my granny went to market and bought eggs and milk and flour” (is she making a cake?), “my granny went to market and bought eggs and milk and flour and shoe polish” (what image came to mind? Use that) “my granny went to market and bought eggs and milk and flour and shoe polish and tea” (continue building the story in your head), and so on.

    When we actually go shopping, if we don’t have a written list we may rely on the simple story of “what I’m going to cook for dinner” and walking ourselves through that story to ensure we get the things we need.

    This is because our memory thrives (and depends!) on connections. Literal synapse connections in the brain, and conceptual contextual connections in your mind. The more connections, the better the memory.

    Now imagine a story: “I went to Stonehenge, but in the background was a twin-peaked mountain blue. I packed a red suitcase, placing a conch shell inside it, when suddenly I heard a trombone, and…” Ring any bells? These are example items from the memory test earlier, though of course you may have seen different things in a different order.

    So next time you want to remember things, don’t study as though for a test. Prepare to tell a story!

    Try going through the test again, but this time, ignore their instructions because we’re going to use the test differently than intended (we’re rebels like that). Don’t rush, and don’t worry about the score this time (or even whether or not you saw a given image previously), but instead, build a story as you go. We’re willing to bet that after it, you can probably recite most of the images you saw in their correct order with fair confidence.

    Here’s the link again: Take The Same Test, But This Time Make It Story-Worthy!

    Again, ignore what it says about your score this time, because we weren’t doing that this time around. Instead, list the things you saw.

    What you were just able to list was the result of you doing story-telling with random zero-context images while under time pressure.

    Imagine what you can do with actual meaningful memories of your ongoing life, people you meet, conversations you have!

    Just… Take the time to smell the roses, then rehearse the story you’ll tell about them. That memory will swiftly become as strong as any memory can be, and quickly get worked into your long-term memory for the rest of your days.

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

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