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Wearing blue light-producing glasses for 30 minutes each morning improved sleep duration and quality.

Better sleep was associated with greater alertness, work engagement, and job performance the following day.

Employees with existing sleep difficulties experienced particularly strong improvements in sleep quality.

Several years ago, my colleagues and I conducted a study examining whether blue light-blocking glasses could improve employee sleep and work performance. We found that wearing these glasses in the evening improved sleep, with benefits that extended into the following workday.

But that research left me wondering about the other half of the day. If blocking blue light in the evening improves sleep, what happens if we deliberately increase blue light exposure in the morning? Could that also improve sleep and subsequent performance at work? In a new paper, colleagues and I find that it does.

Our sleep is partially regulated by a biological process known as the circadian rhythm, an approximately 24-hour cycle that helps determine when we feel alert and when we feel sleepy. Although circadian rhythms are generated internally, they are also influenced by environmental cues, especially light. Blue wavelengths of light have particularly powerful effects on this system.

Exposure to blue light late in the evening can delay our circadian rhythms, pushing back the time when our bodies are prepared to sleep. However, exposure in the morning can have the opposite effect, shifting our circadian rhythms earlier and helping synchronize our biological clocks with the external 24-hour day. This can make it easier to fall asleep at an appropriate time later that night.

One way to obtain morning blue light exposure is to spend time outdoors in natural sunlight. That works well in sunny climates with nice weather, but what can people do in adverse conditions or when they simply don’t have time to go outside? An alternative is to use blue light-producing........

© Psychology Today