Is screen time getting between you and some quality shut eye?

Recent studies have shown that shifts in sleep patterns shift the body’s natural clock (known as its circadian rhythm). This can have devastating health effects because it controls not only our wakefulness but also the individual clocks that dictate the function of our body’s other organs. In other words, stressors like blue-light exposure, which can affect our circadian rhythm, can have much more serious consequences than scientists originally thought.

“We have known for quite awhile now that light is the most powerful cue for shifting the phase or resetting the time of the circadian clock,” says Anne-Marie Chang, neuroscientist at Harvard University. “We also know that melatonin is present at low levels during the day, begins being released a few hours before bedtime and peaks in the middle of the night. Past studies have shown that light suppresses melatonin, such that light in the early evening causes a circadian delay, or resets the clock to a later schedule; and light in the early morning causes a circadian advancement, or resets the clock to an earlier schedule.”

If you think your late-evening phone habits might be messing with your sleep cycles, it might be time to declare your bedroom a “no phone zone” a couple of hours before bedtime. But what if you depend on your phone as your alarm clock? It might be time to try one of these analog beauties in its place.