Mobile phones disrupt sleeping patterns, schedule without you knowing it

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Most people are addicted to using laptops, smartphones, tablets and other similar gadgets these days. In fact, there are some who keep on using these gadgets even when they are already in bed. Unfortunately, there is a bad news for those who love to use these at night because mobile phones disrupt sleeping patterns without people knowing about it.

According to Mirror Online, Prof. Paul Gringras, a professor of children's sleep medicine and neurodisability, who took part in a research regarding the relation of light-emitting devices and adverse sleep properties, stated that it a must for manufacturers of tablets, smartphones and e-readers to come up with a 'sleep mode' technology for the purpose of helping the user improves his sleep pattern and schedule.

The professor found out that using these devices in bed can impact your sleep negatively. It can delay your sleep for an extra hour.

People nod off in the evening because their body starts to produce more melatonin, commonly referred to as sleep hormone, as it gets darker at night, the BBC News says. Wavelengths of light from the blue-green spectrum released by tablets, smartphones and e-readers interfere in the production of this hormone and increases one's alertness as well. Thus, causing the person to sleep later than the usual.

According to the new study conducted by Prof Gringras and his co-researchers, the new models of these gadgets contain too much of the sleep-disrupting wavelengths of light.

The study concluded that while bigger, brighter and bluer light-emitting devices might be great for day-use, these are actually not good at night-time.

They recommended that manufacturers should be aware of their responsibility to the effect of their devices to the users. It would be better if they come up with a software design that will let users to automatically turn on "bedtime mode," which should lessen the device's light intensity and turns the blue-green to yellow-red light emissions.

The study was written by Prof. Paul Gringras, Dr. Benita Middleton, Prof. Debra Skene and Dr. Victoria Revell. It was done at the University of Surrey's chronobiology facility. To carry on the research, they used some of the most popular light-emitting devices for the year 2014 from three different categories - smartphones, tablets and e-reader. These are the iPhone 5S, iPad Air and Kindle Paperwhite first generation. The reason why they decided to use these certain devices over the other ones is because these claim to offer the user a better view at night or in a dark room.

For now, what you can do is lower the level of brightness of your device at night. Below is a tutorial on how you can lower your iPhone 5s' brightness level: