Sleep is essential to every human being. Though there are some spooky conditions that could make you go all day with as little sleep as possible, the human body is simply not designed to withstand sleepless days.
According to a new Northwestern Medicine study, even moderate ambient lighting during night-time sleep can harm your cardiovascular health, as well as increase insulin resistance and impair glucose regulation the next morning, both of which are risk factors for heart disease, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome. This reflects how important it is for people to reduce the amount of light exposure during sleep.
Normally, your heart rate and other cardiovascular parameters are lower at night and higher during the day. Light exposure during the daytime, naturally increases heart rate via activation of the sympathetic nervous system, as a means to be alert and meet the challenges of the day. The parasympathetic system, which saves your energy and regulates the functions like digestion, is supposed to be predominant at night, but a lit room stimulates the sympathetic system to overtake it.
Another discovery was an increase in insulin resistance the morning after patients slept in a bright room. Insulin resistance occurs when the cells in your muscles, fat, and liver do not respond properly to insulin and eventually cannot utilize glucose from your blood for energy.
Prior research of a large group of healthy people who were exposed to light during sleep discovered that many of them were overweight or obese. In large urban areas, sleeping with artificial light at night during sleep is common, like with a bedside lamp on, a light on in the bedroom, or keeping the television on. Also, it was found that moderate light exposure caused the body to go into a higher alert state, which increased the heart rate, the force with which the heart contracts, and the rate at which the blood is transported to your blood vessels for oxygenated blood flow. Maybe it is time we should rethink how and when to light our rooms.
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