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Apple's Night Shift May Have Zero Effect On Sleep (macworld.com)
eggboard writes: While blue light emitted by monitors and mobile displays has been widely cited as a cause in disrupting people's circadian rhythm, the evidence is thin: a narrow range of blue spectra might not be the problem (it may be a more complicated interaction), brightness may be more important, and Night Shift's (and f.lux's) effects are probably too negligible anyway.
Apple's Night Shift feature lets you adjust the color temperature of your display to the warmer end of the spectrum. Apple notes, "Many studies have shown that exposure to bright blue light in the evening can affect your circadian rhythms and make it harder to fall asleep."
"You're in heap of trouble, boy."
If it helps my sleep, cool. If it doesn't, I still like it.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Been using f.lux for a few years now; it does wonders to reduce my eye strain but I still find myself up in the late hours, regardless.
Certainly the issue is more complicated than just blue light, but I've noticed at night it doesn't seem to be as painful to look at in the dark for longer periods (using the same brightness). It may just be a placebo - but I think it at least helps.
I can easily see how this could be of use to some users. These problems are idiosyncratic, so it varies between individuals. Making a blanket statement that it of no use is basically willful ignorance. It makes a quick headline, and helps no one in the long run.
Why is Snark Required?
Works for me... Zzz...
...blue light does disrupt sleep, filtering the light from one source probably won't make enough of a difference. We need to filter blue light from all sources, so unless all your energy-saving lightbulbs filter out blue light too, one screen isn't going to make a whole lotta difference. Try UV blocking safety goggles (the orange type, not the yellow type) and see if that helps.
Contrast ratios are too high when reading in bed. Warmer light is perceived as less bright, reducing apparent contrast.
I am happy they have it now, rather than making white backgrounds gray as an alternate.
I'm pretty sure redshift (which I'm running under PC-BSD) assists in managing my sleep disorder. I have three 24" displays. It's a lot of light. The last time redshift was inadvertently disabled, at some point in my evening work session I looked at the clock and went "holy shit, it's past midnight!" This does not comply with my sleep program.
My disorder is N24. After many years of personal study, I have fairly high confidence that while it is supposed to help, blue light in the morning influences me very little, if at all (I have a professional treatment box). Blue light at bedtime does, however, seem to make things worse.
What did cure my disorder was 0.75 milligrams of sustained-release melatonin roughly six hours before bedtime.
Before I tried SR melatonin, over several years of experimenting with non-SR melatonin I only ever managed to reduce my 25.5 hour circadian day to 24.25 hours. Drifting 15 minutes a day doesn't sound like much, but it's substantially less desirable than the full cure.
Apparently many people don't get groggy after taking melatonin mid-day. It happens to hit me pretty hard.
Recently I read a paper about how melatonin increases circulation to the hands and feet without increasing core metabolism, with the net effect that core body temperature declines (apparently, enhanced vascularization of the nail beds makes them efficient radiators). Since I started wearing warmer clothing after my daily melatonin dose, my early evening grogginess has declined by about 2/3rds. It doesn't hurt either to throw in some "orthostatic challenge". This was how the stuffy research paper described "standing up and walking around".
Given how blue light works, there's not much point shielding yourself from one source if you end up getting exposed to another source. The reading lamp in my bedroom is a yellow bug lamp. Added bonus: it's extremely slow to warm up, so it's a great lamp to turn on for a few seconds in the middle of the night, if my back pain treatment arsenal rolls out of reach under the bed.
I don't know if it's a side effect of doing photography for a while or what, but I absolutely cannot stand a massive color cast across a whole display. Ugh.
I have to say I really like how you can elect to manually turn it on for a day to try and it will turn itself off forever after... so glad they didn't turn it on by default.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Is if you have a dark, quiet environment to sleep during the daytime
and you stay on night shift, none of this rotating shifts crap
I gotta get ready for work
So does that mean that Red Shift is going away?
So many other sources of blue light, it won't help unless you're a teenager with your nose glued to the damn thing.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
While blue light emitted by monitors and mobile displays has been widely cited as a cause in disrupting people's circadian rhythm, the evidence is thin
and
Many studies have shown that exposure to bright blue light in the evening can affect your circadian rhythms and make it harder to fall asleep
I know the two quotes come from different people (the submitter and "Apple", respectively), but putting them both in the summary without further comment seems odd. Which one is true, then?
Too little light has never caused any eye harm, it's too bright light that can burn out the retina. Otherwise we would all be blind now due to the darkness of the night.
The only problem with too little light is that it's easy to trip over stuff in the middle of the night.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I agree here, I can work flexible hours and up 05:00, leave work at 15:00 and get home to be able to get a nap if needed. Seems to me that a nap a few times per week helps a lot. I don't need it every day, just some days. The need to nap also seems to be somewhat related to what I eat.
Also realize that all the jokes about having Siesta is actually just part of the normal sleep cycle for humans.
Inability to sleep - that's often stress related, and sometimes lack of exercise.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
As an owner of an iPad Air and iPhone 6, the Night Shift feature of iOS 9.3 has one advantage for me: because I have to wake up when it's still dark outside (I start work at 0630 hours in the morning), turning on my iPad or iPhone on the night stand next to my bed when I wake up no longer gives me eyestrain (and sometimes a headache) with that blast of bluish-white light.
I appreciate what they are going for, but the brightness is still too high for me to use at night. On Android I could get an app to lower the brightness of the whole system, but all I see for iOS are dimmer browser apps of dubious origin.
... and stop blaming your phone for your insomnia.
I used to go to bed when my eyes felt like they were burning out of their sockets. After installing f.lux, it was much easier to use the computer into the deep hours of the night that I ended up going to sleep much later.
Best thing I've found is 70% amber tinted glasses for looking at any screen (nearsighted anyways). I put them on when I'm looking at a screen, then switch to normal glasses around the house (with low lighting through the house).
Anyways, melatonin is inhibited by blue light and melatonin is not nearly as correlated with sleep as the histamine system (mainly h3 receptors). Blue light inhibiting melatonin probably reduces the oxidative handling system more than it does effect sleep, as melatonin is a very strong antioxidant.
Isn't it easier to just turn off your phone when you go to bed?
Even with f.lux and in "night view mode", monitors are unbearably bright to night-adjusted vision.
I discovered PangoBright when I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep one night.
It works great, and now I always work at 30% brightness at night.
Just use Magnavision tinted glasses for computer use:
http://www.amazon.com/Magnivis...
-- I fear explanations explanatory of things explained.