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Sleep is fundamental to good health. Sleep impacts the quality of your day, and what happens during the day impacts the quality of your sleep. While many factors affect sleep, one we can control, yet often don’t, is the intensity of light we are exposed to before bedtime.
As we saw in The End of Night, the development of the light bulb and alternating current allowed us to effectively eliminate night at will. Since most of us prefer to get a good night's sleep, recall during the Paleolithic the slow decrease in light intensity at dusk prepared the brain for sleep, primarily by the secretion of melatonin. Today, we often keep the room lights on until bedtime and then, once turned off, expect to fall asleep effortlessly. For millions of Americans, the failure to adequately prepare the brain results in nonrestorative sleep.
According to EurekAlert, the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism will publish an article comparing normal room light versus dim light on the secretion of melatonin:
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