The Dreamers Company wants to help you get your best night’s sleep. Good sleep is the foundation of great health, so we designed the DreamTech Sleep Lens. Our sleep glasses block 99.9% of artificial blue and green light allowing your body to naturally produce the sleep hormone melatonin.
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One of the side effects of ageing is the gradual narrowing of our own horizons. The more we learn and understand the more we choose to disregard information. The more we ignore the obvious. This isn’t, by a rule, a bad thing. We overlook things about our friends, partners, family, jobs, we scan for what we know and like, while ignoring what we don’t. Understanding the psychology behind this wilful blindness can help us fight the impulses of habits we wish we could change.
SLEEPING PILLS AND MELATONIN TABLETS:
Being stuck staring at the ceiling while the night time hours tick away is a horribly, frustrating experience. Whether you are thinking about the bills you need to pay, the work you need to do or just counting sheep, the temptation to reach for a sleeping pill, or sleep aid for relief can be overpowering. Maybe it helps that night, maybe it helps the next night, but if you are someone who regularly struggles to get to sleep, taking a sleeping pill is potentially a bandaid approach.
RISKS AND SIDE EFFECTS:
Aid tolerance: Extended use of sleeping pills will help your body build a tolerance to sleep aids, forcing you to take more and more for relief.
Aid dependence: Becoming dependent on any sleep aid can become problematic. Prescription sleep aids can be highly addictive and without them your quality and quantity of sleep will decrease significantly.
Rebound Insomnia: If you turn to a sleep aid for insomnia relief, sometimes your condition can worsen once off the aid.
Drowsiness: Depending on the specific aid you use, your body may be forced to skip over phases of your sleep cycle to keep you sedated. This can have disastrous effects the next day leading to you feeling drowsy, dizzy, and unsteady.
Fighting the temptation to take shortcuts with your sleep is not easy. The DreamTech sleep lens is a non-pharmaceutical, cost effective and natural way to improve our sleep and enhance our health and wellbeing. We here at Dreamers believe we all need to reclaim our right to a full night of sleep.
Sleep well,
Dreamers.
https://www.pennmedicine.org/updates/blogs/health-and-wellness/2018/july/sleeping-aids
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The Dreamers Company wants to help you get your best night’s sleep. Good sleep is the foundation of great health, so we designed the DreamTech Sleep Lens. Our sleep glasses block 99.9% of artificial blue and green light allowing your body to naturally produce the sleep hormone melatonin.
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One of the side effects of ageing is the gradual narrowing of our own horizons. The more we learn and understand the more we choose to disregard information. The more we ignore the obvious. This isn’t, by a rule, a bad thing. We overlook things about our friends, partners, family, jobs, we scan for what we know and like, while ignoring what we don’t. Understanding the psychology behind this wilful blindness can help us fight the impulses of habits we wish we could change.
ALCOHOL & MARIJUANA:
There are a number of misconceptions around alcohol consumption and marijuana usage and how they can affect our sleep patterns – ‘A night cap helps me sleep,’ ‘Alcohol/Marijuana reduces my anxiety and helps me sleep,’ or even ‘I have the craziest dreams when I drink.’ While none of these are scientifically true, they all defiantly prioritise sleep quantity over quality.
Both alcohol and marijuana are classified as depressants, and alcohol is further classified as a sedative. However, being a sedative is very different to being a sleep agent. While both substances may help you sleep for a long period of time, they also impede your brain’s ability to reach Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep. During REM sleep your cardiovascular system is subject to immense acceleration and deceleration, your sympathetic nervous system is kicked into overdrive – preparing your body to respond to external threats, and your arms and legs will suffer temporary paralysis, and skipping this stage of your sleep can be incredibly harmful to your overall well being.
Each stage of sleep has unique and separate functions, and short-changing or skipping a stage is hardly advantageous. When we deny our brain from reaching REM sleep it cleverly keeps track of how much dream sleep that we have missed, waiting until the alcohol or marijuana is out of our system. Once sober we are flooded with vivid dreams that may be exciting but again, drastically impact our quality of sleep.
We continue to try and find ways around the necessity of sleep, excuses to tell ourselves what we need and don’t need. But the truth that we are sometimes wilfully blind to realise is that we are not smarter than the process of evolutionary sleep. We here at Dreamers believe we all need to reclaim our right to a full night of sleep.
Sleep well,
Dreamers.
Image credit: Rachael Rae Show
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More than 20% of all fatal road crashes in Australia involve driver fatigue. Drivers with a sleep debt regularly risk nodding off and harming themselves or others on the road. Greater awareness of the causes and consequences of driving fatigue is an important first step in reducing the unnecessary risk we take on every time we get in a car.
DULLED REACTIONS
Staying alert more than 18 consecutive hours will cause a measurable dip in your short-term and long-term memory. Your ability to focus, cognitive speed, decision making capacity and reaction time will all suffer. An individual operating on 6 hours sleep or less is 33% more likely to be involved in an accident, than someone who sleeps between 7 and 9 hours a night.
The longer we are awake, the stronger is our desire to sleep. If you have ever seen someone - or experienced it yourself - fighting to stay awake during a class, a meeting or a TV show, their eyes get heavy, their head starts to roll and then they catch themselves with a start. That is your brain involuntarily taking control of your sleep, like a pilot steadying a plane through heavy turbulence.
Experiments* have attempted to measure the effect of sleep deprivation on our reaction time and found some startling results. For most of us the thought of getting in the car with a driver who had been drinking is foolhardy and reckless. But sharing a ride with someone who is sleep deprived can actually be just as dangerous. Williamson & Feyer forced 39 subjects to stay alert for 17 hours and then tested their reflexes and reaction time. Subjects regularly returned results that were equivalent or worse than an individual with a Blood Alcohol Concentration of 0.05%
Whether you are checking your work emails at 2am, gaming till the early hours of the morning or stuck on the red-eye flight home you could be putting yourself, your family or the general public in serious jeopardy. We here at Dreamers believe we all need to reclaim our right to a full night of sleep.
Sleep well,
Dreamers.
*Willamson and Feyer, 2000. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10984335/
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One of the side effects of aging is the gradual narrowing of our own horizons. The more we learn and understand the more we choose to disregard information. The more we ignore the obvious. This isn’t, by a rule, a bad thing. We overlook things about our friends, partners, family, jobs, we scan for what we know and like, while ignoring what we don’t. Understanding the psychology behind this wilful blindness can help us fight the impulses of habits we wish we could change.
CAFFEINE:
In order for our cells to move or communicate they require Adenosine 5-Triphosphate (ATP). ATP is the molecule responsible for storing and transferring energy through a cell. We can imagine ATP as similar to an ATM at a bank. Your body can ask for a withdrawal of energy, but you can only take out what is already in your account. As we burn through ATP the, broken down and now isolated, adenosine builds up in the bloodstream and interacts with cell receptors to inhibit neural activity and cause fatigue and drowsiness.
Caffeine is a psychoactive stimulant that tricks your body into feeling alert. It is the most commonly consumed stimulant in the world, used (and sometimes misused) for that little burst of energy to help jump start your system. But it’s just how long that morning cup of coffee can stay in our system that we need to be wary of.
Adenosine and caffeine have an almost identical chemical makeup, allowing the caffeine we ingest to connect to, and block, our adenosine cell receptors – stopping the slow inhibition of neural activity and stopping that drowsy feeling. Through the day that’s great however, caffeine has a half-life of 5-6 hours, which means half of what you ingested will still be in your system 6 hours after drinking a cup of coffee, a quarter still buzzes through you 12 hours later.
There is nothing wrong with enjoying a cup of coffee, there is nothing wrong with drinking a cup of coffee to stay alert while you’re at work. But understanding the science behind caffeine consumption and busting the myths we tell ourselves can help us alter habits we wish we could change. We here at Dreamers believe we all need to reclaim our right to a full night of sleep.
Sleep well,
Dreamers.
]]>The Dreamers Company wants to help you get your best night’s sleep. Good sleep is the foundation of great health, so we designed the DreamTech Sleep Lens. Our sleep glasses block 99.9% of artificial blue and green light allowing your body to naturally produce the sleep hormone melatonin.
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Hormonal changes can wreak havoc on our sleep patterns. However just as important is the tremendous effects sleep deprivation can have on fluctuating hormone levels, particularly those involved in the human body’s reproductive system. Our ability to regulate the production and secretion of Luteinizing Hormone (LH) can play a huge part in our overall health and wellbeing. In males, LH primarily promotes the production of testosterone. While in females, LH stimulates the production of estrogen and progesterone. But just how detrimental poor sleep hygiene can be on your hormonal balance may surprise you.
TESTOSTERONE
Both males and females produce testosterone, and its production is equally important despite males producing far more of it. Low testosterone levels can have a number of negative effects on the body: -
- A drop in libido: After the age of 30, your testosterone will begin to drop at around 1% per year, lowering your natural sex drive. A fraction of men suffering from erectile dysfunction can trace it back to low testosterone levels.
- Increased fat storage and decreased muscle development: Testosterone helps the body burn fat quicker and assists in protein synthesis which aids in muscle and strength development.
- Increased risk of injury: A multi-year study of NBA players revealed athletes with low testosterone levels showed a statistically significant increase in injury risk.
Our testosterone levels operate on a daily cycle. The longer we are awake, the lower our testosterone, with peak hormone volumes measured during REM sleep. But every night of poor or broken sleep can have a quantifiable impact. The University of Chicago conducted an experiment with healthy, young males and saw a 10-15% drop in testosterone after only one week of sleep deprivation (classified as five hours of sleep or less). Low testosterone levels (hypogonadism) has also been linked to insomnia. Males suffering from hypogonadism experience fewer deep sleep cycles and a lower overall quality of sleep.
ESTROGEN
Estrogen is responsible for regulating menstrual cycles, initiating sexual development, managing cholesterol, and protecting bone health. Rising and falling levels of estrogen and progesterone can affect a female’s ability to fall asleep and influence the quality of sleep they experience, with a shocking *67% of women experiencing forms of insomnia at least a few days every month.
For males, the production of dominant reproductive hormones is a simple daily process. However, a females hormone production is dynamic, and changes over the course of a monthly cycle. While asleep LH pulses are slow, releasing a controllable level of estrogen, but with periods of wakefulness or nights of broken sleep these pulses quicken, flooding the body with abnormal levels of estrogen and progesterone, disturbing the natural menstrual cycle.
Additionally, extended periods of alertness and the release of the alertness-hormone cortisol can suppress typical levels of reproductive hormones, potentially leading to poor sleeping habits and unstable mental health.
While there are remedies to low testosterone and hormone imbalances, treating the underlying cause remains not only the most effective, but the easiest, method of taking control of your own health. We here at Dreamers believe we all need to reclaim our right to a full night of sleep.
Sleep well,
Dreamers.
*In accordance with the National Sleep Foundation poll
]]>The Dreamers Company wants to help you get your best night’s sleep. Good sleep is the foundation of great health, so we designed the DreamTech Sleep Lens. Our sleep glasses block 99.9% of artificial blue and green light allowing your body to naturally produce the sleep hormone melatonin.
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Heart problems are the leading cause of death and illness in the world. While a poor diet or limited exercise can be harmful, it’s difficult to overstate the importance of good sleeping habits on the health of the heart. Sleep provides time for the body to rejuvenate. During non-REM sleep your heart rate will slow down, your blood pressure drops and your breathing deepens. Your heart gets a chance to relax from the stress of the day.
Several studies* have found a link between sleep deprivation and increasing blood pressure. Staying alert longer than the recommended 15 – 17 hours a day involves a massive exertion of energy and puts a strain on your cardiovascular system.
WHAT IS NOCTURNAL DIPPING?
During a healthy night’s sleep your blood pressure will drop somewhere between 10 – 20%. Broken sleep, whether from sleep disruptions, a deficiency in the natural production of the sleep hormone melatonin or that last cup of coffee, stops this drop and can lead to overall hypertension (high blood pressure.)
While we may not notice the effects of hypertension in our day-to-day lives, the extended overuse of our heart can make us more susceptible to a stroke or heart attack.
BLOOD SUGAR IMBALANCE:
It isn’t just blood pressure that is affected by poor sleep hygiene, our blood sugar balance is directly tied to our production of the alertness hormone cortisol. When we are faced with a stressor, perceived or real, our brain produces cortisol to prepare us for a fight or flight response by flooding the body with ready-to-burn glucose and stopping the flow of insulin. In a stressful situation this is invaluable, however elevated levels of the alertness hormone cortisol regularly flooding the body with glucose over a long period of time can have harmful effects on our blood sugar levels;
Sleep isn’t just something to pass the night hours, it is a necessity responsible for rejuvenating and invigorating your body for the next day. We here at Dreamers believe we all need to reclaim our right to a full night of sleep.
Sleep well,
Dreamers.
Photo credit: Matias Alonso Revelli
The Dreamers Company wants to help you get your best night’s sleep. Good sleep is the foundation of great health, so we designed the DreamTech Sleep Lens. Our sleep glasses block 99.9% of artificial blue and green light allowing your body to naturally produce the sleep hormone melatonin.
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The phrase ‘The rich get richer’ applies to more than just your financial wealth. In fact, every decision we make in a day, no matter how small, will have some form of biochemical reaction to impact our overall well being. Serotonin is often referred to as the ‘Happy Hormone’ because of its role in regulating our mood but it also plays an important part in learning, sleeping, eating and digestion. So that decision to watch one more episode before bed could have more of an impact then you realise, especially if you’re not wearing your Dreamers
HOW DO I BOOST MY SEROTONIN?
Being serotonin-deficient can have a number of telling symptoms - You might be feeling anxious or low, irritable or aggressive, you may experience waves of nausea, or have powerful cravings for sweet or carbohydrate-heavy foods – and these symptoms can range from minor fluctuations to debilitating behaviours. But there are a number of different ways you can increase your serotonin levels naturally.
- Food: Serotonin is produced from tryptophan, an amino acid commonly found in protein rich foods. Salmon, chicken, turkey, eggs, spinach, milk, and nuts are all options of foods with ample tryptophan.
- Exercise: Exercise (particularly aerobic) helps release tryptophan into your blood, allowing the amino acid to reach your brain where it is converted into serotonin.
- Sunlight*: A study in Norway suggested that our serotonin levels are linked to the changing seasons, dropping in the light-scarce months of Winter, and rising in the middle of Summer. Morning sunlight helps kick start the brain's production of serotonin and can greatly impact our mood.
HOW DOES THIS AFFECT MY SLEEP?
Both the sleep hormone melatonin and the happy hormone serotonin are produced in the very centre of the brain, an area called the pineal gland. When the sun is up the pineal gland takes the amino acid tryptophan and converts it into serotonin to release throughout the body. As the sun begins to set, all that serotonin which has compounded during the day, and the left-over tryptophan, is recycled and converted by the pineal gland into the sleep hormone melatonin. The more serotonin in your body the more melatonin can be produced.
This process also works in reverse. When our melatonin levels are high our brain is able to convert that into serotonin as the sun rises. Plainly, when we sleep well, we are more likely to be happy the next day, and when we have a good day, we are more likely to sleep well. In other words, the rich get richer.
There are small decisions we can make every day that can have huge implications on our overall well being, and just maybe the secret to happiness is as simple as just getting seven to nine hours of sleep a night. We here at Dreamers believe we all need to reclaim our right to a full night of sleep.
Sleep well,
Dreamers.
*
Influence of Tryptophan and Serotonin on Mood and Cognition with a Possible Role of the Gut-Brain Axis. 10.3390/nu8010056.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4728667/
Seasonality is associated with anxiety and depression: the Hordaland health study
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17573120/
Photo credit: Matias Alonso Revelli
]]>The Dreamers Company wants to help you get your best night’s sleep. Good sleep is the foundation of great health, so we designed the DreamTech Sleep Lens. Our sleep glasses block 99.9% of artificial blue and green light allowing your body to naturally produce the sleep hormone melatonin.
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Getting a good night’s sleep is an extraordinary framework for your holistic health. However, the longer you are awake the more pressure you put on yourself to sleep. While some people swear by meditation or breathing exercise right before bed, understanding where this stress comes from is the first vital step in building an effective night time routine and learning how to take control of your body's stress levels.
WHAT IS CORTISOL:
Cortisol is your body's first line of defence against danger, essentially operating as a built-in alarm system. When your brain identifies a stressor, your body is flooded with an extra burst of energy to prime it for instant action. Cortisol is often referred to as ‘the stress hormone’ but a more appropriate name would be the ‘alertness hormone’, because it has many more important functions than just putting your body under stress. It is how you remain alert and responsive while you are at school or work, it helps regulate our blood pressure, maintain our immune system, influences memory formation and, for women, helps in the development of a foetus.
The secretion of the alertness hormone cortisol is controlled by three interconnected parts of the body – the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, and the adrenal gland - or the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (or HPA axis). The release of cortisol is a little different to either melatonin* or serotonin*. While your melatonin levels build throughout the day, peaking in the middle of the night, cortisol production is switched on and off as your brain perceives stressors.
WHY IS MANAGING YOUR CORTISOL SO IMPORTANT?
Our cortisol secretion process is similar to that of an unfamiliar shower, one quarter turn of the hot tap and the once pleasant water temperature becomes scalding hot, one quarter turn of the cold tap and you’re suddenly freezing. When we absorb blue light before bed, from watching tv, texting, or checking emails, our body is inundated with cortisol to keep us alert. Something as simple as wearing Dreamers Lucid Sleep glasses to do the same activities will stop your HPA axis from producing the alertness hormone cortisol and allow your body to naturally produce the sleep hormone melatonin.
It is important to manage our cortisol levels. Too much cortisol over a long period of time can have some damning effects such as; rapid weight gain, high blood pressure, skin changes, muscle weakness and mood swings.
Finding simple solutions to complex biological reactions can help us find the most suitable and effective night time routines. We here at Dreamers believe we all need to reclaim our right to a full night of sleep.
Sleep well,
Dreamers.
*
Link to previous blogs on melatonin and serotonin
Cortisol Effects on Body Mass, Blood Pressure, and Cholesterol in the General Population. Jun 1999 https://doi.org/10.1161/01.HYP.33.6.1364
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The Dreamers Company wants to help you get your best night’s sleep. Good sleep is the foundation of great health, so we designed the DreamTech Sleep Lens. Our sleep glasses block 99.9% of artificial blue and green light allowing your body to naturally produce the sleep hormone melatonin.
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If you are someone who has meticulously built a nighttime ritual and feels they have done everything they can to take control of their sleep hygiene but still struggle to get a full night’s sleep, the solution may lie in the daytime hours. Light and darkness follow a diurnal pattern and the same can be said for our body’s natural cravings. At night, in the absence of light, our body wants to produce the sleep hormone melatonin and suppress production of the alertness hormone cortisol. In the morning, however, you want the opposite. This is the basis of our natural circadian rhythm.
THE BENEFITS OF MORNING LIGHT
We associate the color yellow with the Sun, but the Sun emits a full spectrum of light, including powerful bright blue wavelengths. When your eyes are exposed to this light a signal is sent to your brain to stop producing the sleep hormone melatonin and start boosting the alertness hormone to energize your body and snap that morning grogginess.
Throughout the day you experience fluctuations in your core temperature. During the night, the secretion of melatonin will force your body to cool itself down by sending heat away from the core by increasing blood flow to the extremities. The morning sun can help warm your body enabling the natural thermoregulation process and aiding the production of the alertness hormone cortisol.
But above all, absorbing morning light makes us (biochemically) happy. Being exposed to an hour to an hour and half of sunlight is directly associated with a release in the happy hormone serotonin, a hormone that regulates everything from mood to digestion and is a precursor to melatonin.
Sometimes the trickiest problems have the simplest answers. Filling your room with bright morning light, timing your morning exercise to coincide with the rising sun or altering your morning routine can all help your sleeping habits. We here at Dreamers believe we all need to reclaim our right to a full night of sleep.
Sleep well,
Dreamers.
*Daytime melatonin and light independently affect human alertness and body temperature.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jpi.12583
*Effect of sunlight and season on serotonin turnover in the brain
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12480364/
Photo credit: Matias Alonso Revelli
]]>The Dreamers Company wants to help you get your best night’s sleep. Good sleep is the foundation of great health, so we designed the DreamTech Sleep Lens. Our sleep glasses block 99.9% of artificial blue and green light allowing your body to naturally produce the sleep hormone melatonin.
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Sleep is a biological necessity. There are fundamental functions that are crucial for sleep regulation that have remained unchanged for more than 500 million years of evolution.
The sleep hormone melatonin and the alertness hormone cortisol act on opposite ends of our natural sleep-wake cycle. During the day your brain is working hard to produce the alertness hormone cortisol to help your body deal with both real and perceived stressors. As the sun sets your brain will produce the sleep hormone melatonin to bring on drowsiness by dropping your core temperature, relaxing your muscles and helping ease you to sleep.
The feeling of needing to be alert is a survival instinct carefully built through thousands of years of evolution and while the environmental factors have completely changed, our genetic mechanisms haven’t. So why then, despite living in such comfortable environments is sleep deprivation on the rise? Well plainly, technological advancement has moved far quicker than biological evolution. We have become enamoured with our phones, tablets, computers and TVs, all of which emit sleep disrupting blue and green light and our genetic ability to cope with these wavelengths has not had a chance to develop.
Near the inner surface of our retinas, we have 1.5 million ganglion cells. These cells are partly responsible for mediating our circadian rhythm and about 15,000 of them are directly light sensitive and are incredibly sensitive to blue light. So, while we unwind from the day with a movie, our eyes are absorbing blue light and these photosensitive ganglion cells are firing, telling our brain to produce cortisol to keep us alert, suppressing our body’s natural release of the sleep hormone melatonin, disrupting our natural sleep-wake cycle and combatting 500 million years of natural change.
Evolution has deemed it more important to dedicate our time to the biological mechanisms of sleep more than anything else you might do. If we take the old adage that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something, and you spend four hours a day EVERY DAY, practicing to play the guitar, learn a language or shooting a basketball it will take you nearly seven years to perfect it. Applying that same logic to the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep per day, we can become masters of our own sleep in less than four years.
We here at Dreamers believe we all need to reclaim our right to a full night of sleep.
Sleep well,
Dreamers.
Photo credit: Matias Alonso Revelli
]]>The Dreamers Company wants to help you get your best night’s sleep. Good sleep is the foundation of great health, so we designed the DreamTech Sleep Lens. Our sleep glasses block 99.9% of artificial blue and green light allowing your body to naturally produce the sleep hormone melatonin.
The historical impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is still yet to be fully understood. For most of us, we’re still dealing with the changes and consequences in our day to day lives. What’s interesting is the impact the pandemic has had on our overall wellness and our routines.
The stress of adapting to our new way of living such as working from home, home schooling has meant our bodies are experiencing a shake up due to extra screen time and a lack of sleep routine.
Without a doubt, sleep has been affected by the pandemic. Renowned journalists and medical professionals have begun to uncover the depth of this problem. Late last year an article published by Health Policy Editor, Denis Campbell, in The Guardian UK found that “the overall incidence of worry-related sleep loss rose from 15.7% to 24.7%” [Nationally in Briton]. This is a trend we’re seeing across the globe.
Lockdowns have been found to affect us in the same way as insomnia. An article from Sleep philosopher Patrick Levy highlighted that “the warped relationship with time and the type of discomfort involved makes the two experiences explicitly similar”.
How pandemic changed our lifestyle
Roy Morgan found that nearly 1/3 of Australians were Working-From-Home (WFH) last year, and this put pressure on their living situation, routines, and really just changed the way in which they lived. Screen time and internet usage went up by 70-80% according to research from Monash University last year, and with that our exposure to blue light. We essentially have become an “always on” economy!
Research into sleep / melatonin as a potential treatment
A biological study (Zhou Y, Hou Y, Shen J, Mehra R, Kallianpur A, et al. (2020)) looked into using the sleep hormone, Melatonin, as part of a prevention or even a treatment for those with coronavirus. And this curiosity is turning scientific – there are currently 8 Clinical Trials for Melatonin and COVID-19 in the U.S. as well as a number of scientists delving deeper into the efficacy of it. Whilst the benefits of Melatonin are widely known to the general public: regulating Circadian Rhythm and inducing sleep, the verdict is still yet to come out but so far, it’s looking positive.
It’s pretty clear that a lot of us aren’t getting enough sleep at the time when we actually need it most.
Let’s reclaim our right to a full night of sleep.
Sleep well,
Dreamers.
Article Source: A network medicine approach to investigation and population-based validation of disease manifestations and drug repurposing for COVID-19
Zhou Y, Hou Y, Shen J, Mehra R, Kallianpur A, et al. (2020) A network medicine approach to investigation and population-based validation of disease manifestations and drug repurposing for COVID-19. PLOS Biology 18(11): e3000970. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000970
The Dreamers Company wants to help you get your best night’s sleep. Good sleep is the foundation of great health, so we designed the DreamTech Sleep Lens. Our sleep glasses block 99.9% of artificial blue and green light allowing your body to naturally produce the sleep hormone melatonin.
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With the increase in artificial light effectively making our night sky brighter, environmental brightness in our modern world is wreaking havoc on our ability to sync our circadian rhythms to natural light cycles.
Urban illumination as a result of streetlights, office buildings, billboards, cars, TVs, phones, computers is causing light pollution on a global scale. In fact, if you happen to find yourself onboard the International Space Station you’ll see the lights of the Vegas strip!
Given humans don’t see all that well in the dark. We’re sorry to tell you that those extra childhood carrots won’t change a thing! So naturally we light up dark places… because if pop culture has taught us anything it’s to be afraid of the dark!
The UN tells us that more than half the world’s population (55%) lives in cities and with even more of these big cities functioning 24/7, the urban illumination is constant. That’s a whole lot of people affected by light pollution.
With this in mind scientists and researchers are beginning to look at the effects this is having on our eyes – one study (Park, C. Y. “Night Pollution and Ocular Fatigue”, 2017) suggests technology’s ever-looming presence in our lives is something of a worldwide health issue and it’s drastically affecting our sleep!
When it comes down to it we have to consider the ways that these artificial light sources are affecting us all and essentially is there anything we do about it.
So what can we do about light pollution?
Set yourself up for the ideal sleep space. Think cool, quiet, and dark so if you can:
Let us help you get your best night’s sleep!
Sleep well,
Dreamers.
The Dreamers Company wants to help you get your best night’s sleep. Good sleep is the foundation of great health, so we designed the DreamTech Sleep Lens. Our sleep glasses block 99.9% of artificial blue and green light allowing your body to naturally produce the sleep hormone melatonin.
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Circadian Rhythm. It’s not some underground music genre, but actually a very important part of our functioning lives.
We all have one you know, and unsurprisingly circadian rhythms exist in all creatures and organisms. It ensures a flower opens and closes at the right time. It also keeps nocturnal animals from leaving the safety of their home during the day.
While our own circadian rhythm isn’t as apparent for our immediate daily survival, it does play a major role in our quality of life.
The word ‘circadian’ comes from the Latin phrase ‘circa diem’ meaning around a day. That’s because our circadian rhythm operates on a 24-hour cycle, helping your body carry out its essential processes. Its main function is that it helps control our daily sleep schedule and is hugely influenced by both light and darkness. Our eyes capture changes in light, these changes are recorded and signals are sent throughout our body telling us whether we need to be awake or asleep.
Natural light is extremely valuable to our Circadian Rhythm, balancing out our body’s production of hormones in sync with the time of day. On the flip side, artificial light, like the blue and green light from computers, has disrupting qualities that set the rhythm off kilter.
How Does Our Circadian Rhythm Get Out Of Sync?
Consistency is the most important aspect of maintaining a natural and healthy Circadian Rhythm. Ideally we would be going to bed and waking up at the same time each day. The Circadian Rhythm can get out of sync through simple everyday behaviors such as:
Keeping a routine when it comes to sleep is a key factor to keeping your circadian rhythm in check.
In a perfect world, we’d only be exposed to natural light - allowing the sun to boost wakefulness and darkness to signal the release of ‘the hormone of darkness’, melatonin but we understand that it’s not always possible in our modern world.
With this in mind there’s a few simple things you can do to get your rhythm back in sync:
Simply, your circadian rhythm is your body’s clock. So by leading a balanced, active life you’ll help to keep time on this vital element of your body.
Sleep well,
Dreamers.
]]>The Dreamers Company wants to help you get your best night’s sleep. Good sleep is the foundation of great health, so we designed the DreamTech Sleep Lens. Our sleep glasses block 99.9% of artificial blue and green light allowing your body to naturally produce the sleep hormone melatonin.
It’s often said that the eyes are the window to the soul. It could also be said that the eyes are the window to quality sleep.
Humans spend about 1/3 of our life sleeping but while our body rests, our eyes stay busy, they’re constantly working.
Given our eyes are actually an external part of our brain, when they try to tell us things, we should listen. Fun fact, eyes are the only part of a person’s brain which can be seen directly from the outside!
The eye’s external parts (the cornea and lens) actually blocks 99% of UV light from the sun! However, that doesn’t mean that we’re safe to do as we please. Light still affects us in a very large way, and has lasting effects on our sleep. Sleep deprivation can lead to a whole host of issues such as slower reaction time, poor concentration, dry eyes, irritability, food cravings, brain fog, eye spasms and increased stress and this is all after only 48 hours! Long term, there are far more serious consequences of sleep deprivation so getting good quality sleep is key to your overall health.
Sleep can be divided into two parts – Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM). REM sleep makes up about 20% of your total sleep and it’s this part of sleep that’s crucial for brain development. REM sleep is vital for learning, memory and mood. It is also when we are most likely to experience vivid dreams!
Sleep is the single most important thing we can do for our mental and physical health so let’s wake up to the facts so we can get our best night’s sleep.
Sleep well,The Dreamers Company wants to help you get your best night’s sleep. Good sleep is the foundation of great health, so we designed the DreamTech Sleep Lens. Our sleep glasses block 99.9% of artificial blue and green light allowing your body to naturally produce the sleep hormone melatonin.
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The relationship between sleep and light is much more closely linked than you could imagine. Fundamentally, all light - natural and artificial - affects the way we sleep in some capacity, but not all light will have the same impact on our body’s natural timing.
In the absence of light, your brain will naturally produce critical hormones to promote sleep. As we wind down from the day, our melatonin levels rise, initiating a response of drowsiness, muscle relaxation and a drop in your body temperature. If we were able to listen and interpret these signs our quality of sleep would be much higher.
Unfortunately, in the modern day we are universally connected to the internet 24/7. Our laptops and phones have almost become a physical extension of our body, yet this digital alertness is having a serious impact on our bodies circadian rhythm. The blue and green light given off from your computer, phone or tablet will neutralize the natural effects of melatonin.
As a study on the Effects of Light on Human Circadian Rhythm explains: “One of the biggest threats to our relationship with sleep is the type of light that we see, and the timing that we get it during the day or night.”
Blue and green wavelengths omit from our favourite pieces of technology (Phone, computers, tablets, TVs - all the good stuff) and are incredibly beneficial during the daylight hours, boosting your attention, reaction time and even mood. At night however, they are completely disruptive.
While it’s true that all light can suppress our secretion of sleep hormones, blue and green light just does it so much more powerfully. Harvard Researchers have found that blue light can suppress melatonin for twice as long as green light, shifting your circadian rhythm by twice as much.
How can one best prep themselves with light to avoid affecting sleep?
Light, especially artificial light, is one of the biggest threats to our sleep, health and overall well-being in today’s society. We here at Dreamers believe we all need to reclaim our right to a full night of sleep.
Sleep well,
Dreamers.
Image credit: Matias Alonso Revelli
]]>The Dreamers Company wants to help you get your best night’s sleep. Good sleep is the foundation of great health, so we designed the DreamTech Sleep Lens. Our sleep glasses block 99.9% of artificial blue and green light allowing your body to naturally produce the sleep hormone melatonin.
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Sleep is so important. That being said, many of us don’t pay enough attention to this basic yet essential activity.
Take a second and count the number of hours you got last night.
Whether you’ve under slept, over slept or got the magic number, your sleep impacts not only your brain and cognitive functions but your entire body.
What Is Sleep?
We all know what sleep is, because, well, we all do it regularly. Sleep is defined as reduced sensory and muscle activity in the body - or part of our ‘altered consciousness’. At Dreamers we believe that sleep is a non-negotiable biological necessity, and the key to a longer, fuller life.
Sleep has evolved over time. As a species, humans have gained greater intelligence and learned to function in an industrial, modern society and with this evolution our patterns and ways to sleep have intrinsically changed.
Lifestyle plays a big role on how and for how long we sleep, but technology is playing an even bigger role. Not only does it affect how much we sleep but the quality of it. In fact, the light emitted from your phone, tablet, tv or computer as you’re reading this right now will have an impact on how you sleep tonight.
What Happens When We Don’t Get Enough Sleep?
Sleep loss is a huge cause for concern when looking at our overall health and wellness and yet it’s an often overlooked source of problems for the human body.
Basically, lack of sleep puts your body at risk.
Did you know that people lacking in sleep have a 40% shortfall in their brain’s ability to learn new facts? 40% is huge, that’s almost half your brain’s new fact learning ability in one go!
Inside your brain lives an amazing structure called your Hippocampus, which acts as the ‘informational inbox’. Its job is to receive and store new memory files. Sleep deprivation can (and will) actually shut this memory box down, like a virus in your computer, directly affecting your body’s cognitive functions.
Your body also contains essential agents called Natural Killer Cells whose job it is to identify and destroy dangerous elements in your body. Numerous scientific studies into Natural Killer Cells are exploring their function after sleep loss. One particular study found that If you don’t get enough sleep these cells aren’t able to do their job. Operating on only 4 hours of sleep can result in a 40% drop in your body’s immune defense. And, with sleep deprivation on the rise, scientists like Eric J. Olsen (M.D.) are now beginning to find links between this deprivation and terminal diseases such as cancer.
Our favorite Sleep Scientist, Matt Walker sums it up best with:
In turn, having healthy amounts of sleep will work wonders on your body, mind and your overall well being.
How Does Light Affect Sleep?
Light, whether from the sun, a lamp or your phone screen, has dramatic effects on your sleep; influencing your circadian rhythm, melatonin production and your sleep cycle.
The circadian rhythm is a 24 hour internal clock that helps mediate your body’s processes. It is controlled by a small part of the brain that is heavily influenced by light exposure. As light enters the eyes, your brain sends a signal throughout your entire body to operate in accordance with the time of day.
When exposed to only natural light, your circadian rhythm will synchronize with the rising and falling of the sun – keeping you alert during the day, and help you to sleep at night. However a growing reliance on technology has led to an over abundance of light sources that misalign our circadian rhythm, throwing our sleep cycles out of whack.
How can you get a better night’s sleep?
Rhythm
Try to stick to a routine. Go to bed at the same time each night and wake up at the same time each morning to unobstructed natural light, regardless of whether it’s the week or the weekend. Having a regular sleep cycle is paramount to improving the quantity and quality of your sleep.
Stay Cool
Ever wonder why you struggle to sleep on hot nights? Your body actually needs to drop its core temperature to initiate sleep. According to scientific studies, 18 degrees celsius is actually the optimum temperature for most people to get those precious zzz’s.
We know we’ve said it already but it’s worth saying again, sleep is important. It’s not an optional part of your lifestyle but rather a non-negotiable biological necessity. Sleep is your shelter from the storm, it’s a key element of your support system, so let’s give it the attention it deserves.
As our society evolves, becoming a 24 hour non-stop environment, we find ourselves in the middle of a great public epidemic of sleep loss. Shed the stigma of laziness. You have the right to a full night’s sleep.
Sleep well,
Dreamers.
Image credit: Matias Alonso Revelli
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