How Blue Light Can Affect Your Health (2024)

FAQs

How Blue Light Can Affect Your Health? ›

Exposure to blue light during daytime hours helps maintain a healthful circadian rhythm. Too much exposure to blue light late at night (through smart phones, tablets, and computers) can disturb the wake and sleep cycle, leading to problems sleeping and daytime tiredness.

Constant exposure to blue light over time could damage retinal cells and cause vision problems such as age-related macular degeneration. It can also contribute to cataracts, eye cancer and growths on the clear covering over the white part of the eye.

It's safe to say most of us spend a lot of time staring at screens. And that can be bad for our eyes. Blue light from electronics is linked to problems like blurry vision, eyestrain, dry eye, macular degeneration, and cataracts. Some people have sleep issues.

Long-term exposure to concentrated sources of blue light energy can cause skin damage, including uneven tone, inflammation and weakening of the skin's surface (4). Simply put, blue light promotes stressors in skin that cause photoaging; that is, aging from exposure to light (5).

Light from electronic screens comes in all colors, but the blues are the worst. Blue light fools the brain into thinking it's daytime. When that happens, the body stops releasing a sleep hormone called melatonin. Melatonin is nature's way of helping us wind down and prepare for bed.

Blue light exposure is an important issue to consider when it comes to our mental health. Too much screen time can negatively impact our emotional well-being, leading to depression, anxiety, and sleep problems. Fortunately, we can reduce blue light exposure and maintain our mental health in several ways.

Blue light glasses, which aim to block the blue light waves, claim to improve sleep and reduce digital eye strain. Wearing blue light glasses isn't harmful to your eyes, so you could wear them all day if you wanted, but it may not eliminate digital eye strain entirely.

This is why fluorescent and LED lights, computer and smartphone screens, and sunlight consistently make the list of top triggers for light-sensitive persons. Even for healthy individuals, short-wavelength blue light led to motion sickness and more severe nausea, especially with repeated exposure.

It can make it difficult to perform tasks at work, have conversations and make up your mind. What causes brain fog? Lack of sleep, poor sleep hygiene or blue light exposure before bed can all contribute to brain fog.

If research proves that blue light damages the retina and macula, the eye conditions that develop as a result are generally irreversible. Treatments can only delay vision impairments or improve vision to only some extent and stop these eye conditions from worsening.

Does blue light age you? ›

In addition to sleep issues, blue light can also cause skin cell damage. There isn't an exact amount of blue light that is known to cause skin cell damage. However, research does show that being exposed to 12 hours a day of blue light is likely to accelerate aging, possibly even with skin cell damage.

Among the visible light spectrum, blue wavelengths have the most powerful effect on your sleep-wake internal body clock. Both natural and artificial blue light can boost your alertness and mental sharpness. But too much of it may keep you awake when your body needs to wind down. Block out light to get good sleep.

Studies show that blue light is an excellent activation agent for hydrogen peroxide, the cleaning agent in tooth whitening systems like Zoom!, giving your teeth a deeper clean in less time.

Cajochen et al. then examined participants' working memory and found enhanced performance in those who were exposed to the LED blue-lit screen. Overall, these findings further reveal the potential of blue light to improve memory. Ultimately, blue light may enhance working memory, attentiveness, and facilitate learning.

In sustained attention task reaction time of LED screen participants was slower than blue light filter screen participants. Therefore, blue light exposure disrupts the ability to focus on a single task.

Too much exposure to blue light late at night (through smart phones, tablets, and computers) can disturb the wake and sleep cycle, leading to problems sleeping and daytime tiredness. Not enough exposure to sunlight in children could affect the growth and development of the eyes and vision.

More so than any other color, blue light messes with your body's ability to prepare for sleep because it blocks a hormone called melatonin that makes you sleepy. Bottom line: You're less drowsy than usual at night, and it takes you longer to fall asleep.

While blue light blocking glasses are effective at reducing the amount of blue light that enter the eyes, there is no current research to suggest that this can improve or protect the health of your eyes. Put simply, there is no scientifically-proven benefit of wearing blue light blocking glasses for your eye health.

Studies have shown that blue light is able to cause ultrastructural damage and mitochondria-dependent cell death in lipofuscin-free RPE cells (23, 24, 25), which suggests that other chromophores, rather than lipofuscin, in the RPE cells mediate these light effects.

Using a blue light filter can have several benefits. It can help reduce eye strain, eye fatigue, and dryness caused by staring at screens for extended periods.