Hello and welcome to session six of Speaking About Sleeping with me, Ellie Sturrock.  This session is about circadian rhythms and patterns of light and dark, and the way that we can understand them and make them work for us.  We know from previous sessions that sleep is controlled in some way by light and dark.

We talked in the last session about blacking out our room, making our environment darker. And this is down to the natural patterns of light and dark and our brains being natural organs that are affected by light and dark, by night and day. And we of course have made modern changes so that we can have light at times of natural darkness.

And for most of us, that's fine. But if we've got a problem with sleep, it can be that we can use the natural light and the ability to darken our rooms and and to play with light and dark to our advantage, so that we minimise the potential problems that can be generated by modernity.

There was a study done in in rural Germany, actually, and they sent people out to a place where there was no artificial light and no electricity, and so they lived a very simple existence there, and what they found was that people naturally went to bed earlier and got up earlier. And they also found that they slept better, naturally. This actually wasn't a study to do with sleep it was just something that they found whilst those people were there.

So what we might want to do is to maximise the amount of our 24 hour cycle to be in the light in the day.  Especially during the winter, so being near a window, near natural light, being out in natural light and with as much skin exposed to the light as possible. Skin and light and vitamin D all work together and for some people taking a supplement of vitamin D can help their sleep. So this can be something that you go to the GP to ask about, vitamin D supplements. You can buy vitamin D supplements too. But for us here, it's about getting outside in the day.

You can buy daylight bulbs and again you can have those on and sit with those at a desk, especially if you're in quite a dark environment with us working from home, it might be that our desk space, our office space isn't ideal, it's, it could be quite dark. So daylight bulbs can be useful and then in the evening you might want to be trying to lower the level of light. So if you've got dimmer switches, if you've got a range of lightings, you might want to reduce your lighting down. You want to emulate the natural cycle so that your body, the melatonin produced in the brain, especially in a brain with ADHD can can be helped by a lower level of light.

Another thing to bear in mind is that night time working is linked to poorer health. Now, if you are working in an industry where you are able to do night and light time shifts, then you have, I think, an opportunity, especially with ADHD as well, to ask your manager to give you more shifts during daylight hours and not during the night. This won't be for everybody, but for a few people, if you're, if you have night time shifts as part of your work pattern, then you would like to minimise those and work in the day as much as you can. So we don't want to generate more mental activity, more bodily activity at night if you're having a problem sleeping.

Okay last pointer here - backlit screens. How many tabloid stories have you read about the danger of backlit screens and how much it really affects sleep? It's so varied, we're all so different. This is something for you to play about with and know yourself. So in terms of evidence,  there is some evidence that if you play on a backlit screen in the evening it will delay your sleep. The Oxford researcher that I heard speaking about this, which was about 18 months ago, we're in 2023 now, said it delayed sleep by about 10 minutes, so that's not very long.  I worked with a woman who found that the best way for her to fall asleep was to play a computer game, and that sent her off to sleep.

It can be for some people that doing games, especially with a hyperactivity, a hyperactive mind, that playing a game and being on a backlit screen does generate more activity. So this again is a really great opportunity for you to be in charge of what you do and know yourself. So play about with this one, play about with this session around light and dark, day and night.

Wishing you well, sleep well.

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