If you often fall asleep leaving the television on, your body is likely to suffer, to rest badly. We are talking today about the quality of your nights, with Géraldine Zamansky, from the Magazine de la Santé on France 5.
franceinfo: American scientists have studied this toxicity of light during our sleep? Even when your eyes are closed?
Geraldine Zamansky: Exactly, it surprised me too, but one of those Harvard researchers, Ivy Chung Mason, first explained to me that our eyelids actually let in at least 5% of the light in the room. And with her team, Ivy therefore measured the consequences on ten volunteers who spent two nights in her laboratory with lots of sensors everywhere.
The first night was in a fairly dark room, the second with average lighting. Result: this light somehow kept the body in a state of alert. The heart rate was higher than in the dark. With less deep sleep. And that could lead to type 2 diabetes, the one that sometimes appears over decades.
Usually, we say that this diabetes comes from too rich a diet and a lack of physical activity, not from a problem with the light in the bedroom?
Again, I shared your surprise. But the volunteers were really nice. They also agreed to sleep with a needle in their arm to allow regular blood samples to be taken remotely.
The researchers were thus able to measure the amounts of sugar and insulin in the blood. Normally, to put it simply, during sleep, insulin organizes the storage of sugar from the meal. Well, all it took was one night that was too bright to mess things up. As if the state of alert maintained by the light had prevented this storage of sugar.
This super fuel for muscles initially remained in circulation, ready to be consumed in an emergency. Until order is restored by further production of insulin.
And that is the beginning of diabetes?
Exactly, you will be able to do medicine: that’s how it starts. A slightly more complicated insulin sugar control. Morality, if your television really serves as a sleeping pill, try to find a device that stops it after half an hour.
If you hate sleeping in complete darkness, place the lamp on the floor, as far away from your face as possible. With a lampshade or bulb that creates orange or red light. Because it’s less stimulating than blue lights like those on screens.
The ideal is still to create as much darkness as possible with shutters and/or opaque curtains. Last option, the night mask on the eyes but you have to put up with it!
>>> The Harvard researchers’ study
>>> The risks of heart disease and the development of diabetes