Episode notes
Screens emit blue light. Blue light suppresses melatonin. Therefore screens before bed are wrecking your sleep, and therefore you should buy the amber glasses. Every link in that chain sounds scientific. Tonight we pull it apart link by link.
Some of it is very well established — light really is the most powerful signal your body clock responds to. Some of it is much shakier than the confidence around it, and inconveniently, the shaky part is the part being sold to you: pooled double-blind trials of blue-blocking glasses show no significant effect on sleep. But we are also careful about the opposite overcorrection, because a bright screen held close for two hours does measurably suppress melatonin.
SOURCES:
Efficacy of blue-light blocking glasses on actigraphic sleep outcomes — systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled crossover trials, 2025
Wood, Plitnick, Figueiro & Rea — Light level and duration of exposure determine the impact of self-luminous tablets on melatonin suppression, Applied Ergonomics, 2013
Written and fact-checked by Brent Burgess. Narration uses a synthetic voice model of his own voice.
This episode is general education and is not medical advice. Sleep problems can have serious underlying causes — talk to your doctor before changing medication, supplements, or treatment.