Do you have a problem sleeping? According to a recent issue of Psychotherapy Networker, somewhere between 9 and 30 % of the population has trouble sleeping. This isn’t a new problem, but it may be an increasing one. Some of the reasons may surprise you.
Naturally, stress, worry, and pain will tend to keep us up at night. But did you know that technology may be a major culprit? Since the invention of electricity, we’ve been changing our relationship to the natural
rhythms of night and day. Our bodies, specifically our brains, need darkness as a signal to manufacture melatonin, which is the neurohormone that mediates our sleep and dreams. Our ancestors were outside in natural daylight all day long, and had only firelight, candles or lanterns to illuminate the night.
Now we tend to stay inside working during the day, under lights that aren’t the same as, or as bright as, the sun. Then at night we’re up to all hours under lights that are too bright, so that our brains don’t know when to stop. To make matters worse, in more recent years, we’ve added television screens and computer monitors to the mix, which emit light in frequencies that are even more irritating to our brains.
There are two great articles in the Psychotherapy Networker issue that I’d recommend reading:
Sleepless in Ameerica: Making It Through the Night in a Wired World, by Mary Sykes Wylie and
Nightmind: Making darkness our friend again, by Rubin Naiman
In my next post, I’ll summarize some helpful steps to treating sleep problems that appear only in the print version. Meanwhile, sweet dreams!