Access to artificial light leads to reduced sleep, reveals study

ARTIFICIAL light is used everywhere in modern society. Yet a new study has found exposure may reduce the amount of sleep you receive.

LIGHT FESTIVALS .. for John Barker story .. HARBIN, CHINA - JANUARY 05: Tourists visit the ice buildings on display at the Grand Ice and Snow World during the 30th Harbin International Ice & Snow Sculpture Festival on January 5, 2014 in Harbin, China. This year's Ice and Snow World features the theme "Global Ice and Snow Dream, World Cartoon Tour". (Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

A NEW study has concluded almost everything we do in our modern lives leads to reduced sleep.

Researchers are blaming artificial light on our sleep quality — meaning everything from watching TV to looking at your phone, to even switching on your bedside lamp can affect your rest.

The study, conducted by researchers from American universities Yale, Harvard and the University of Washington, as well as the University of Quilmes and Conicet in Argentina, also revealed that artificial light causes a greater reduction of sleep in winter, compared with summer.

Researchers looked at two indigenous communities of hunter-gatherers from the Chaco region of north-eastern Argentina by fitting them with wrist devices that logged data about sleep patterns for one week in summer and one week in winter. Both groups were of the same ethnic and socio-economic background, yet only one had access to electricity while the other was dependant on natural light.

In both weeks the group exposed to artificial light was found to sleep less than their natural light-using counterparts. Artificial light was found to have a greater impact on sleep in winter, reducing sleep time by an hour as opposed to 40 minutes in summer.

It also found that users of artificial light would go to sleep later but rise at the same time as those relying on natural light.

Lead author Horacio de la Iglesia from the University of Washington stated, “In a way, this study presents a proxy of what happened to humanity as we moved from hunting and gathering to agriculture and eventually to our industrialised society.

“All the effects we found are probably an underestimation of what we would see in highly industrialised societies where our access to electricity has tremendously disrupted our sleep.”

Co-author, Yale University biological anthropologist Eduardo Fernandez-Duque believes the study may suggest people in industrialised societies aren’t receiving adequate sleep.

“Early humans may have had longer periods of rest than people in most industrialised societies … I think it is important to continue communicating the idea that in our industrial societies we may not be getting all of the sleep we should.”