Now , Melatonin , a lot of people think of as a supplement , but melatonin is naturally released as the evening comes about and into the nighttime hours , it's a hormone that makes you feel sleepy and allows you to fall asleep . So viewing bright light in the late evening hours and nighttime hours is really not good for your sleep quality and your ability to fall and stay asleep . So for most people , a simple rule of thumb is going to be avoid bright artificial lights of all colors and in particular overhead bright artificial lights between the hours of 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. That's right between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. Avoid those bright artificial lights as much as possible .
So viewing bright light in the late evening hours and nighttime hours is really not good for your sleep quality and your ability to fall and stay asleep . So for most people , a simple rule of thumb is going to be avoid bright artificial lights of all colors and in particular overhead bright artificial lights between the hours of 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. That's right between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. Avoid those bright artificial lights as much as possible . Use only as much light as is absolutely necessary .
But the diabolical twist in the way that your brain and body respond to light is that early in the day in the morning hours , you need a lot of bright light ideally from sunlight to be very alert and to wake up . But in the evening hours and nighttime hours , it takes very little light , very few photons in order to wake up your brain and body and to disrupt your circadian clock and disrupt your sleep . So what that means is that once the sun goes down , which of course is going to happen at different times of year in different places on earth .
So it might be 6 p.m. for some , depending on when you go to sleep or 7 p.m. extending into the hours in which you decide to get into bed and go to sleep . And then throughout the night , there are a number of things that you're going to want to do and there are a number of things that you are going to want to avoid doing in order to optimize your sleep . First of all , you're going to want to avoid bright artificial lights of any color .
So now let's talk about what I'm calling critical period , three of each 24 hour cycle . So this would be the period of time of late evening . So it might be 6 p.m. for some , depending on when you go to sleep or 7 p.m. extending into the hours in which you decide to get into bed and go to sleep .
