What time is your digital detox?

When did it become socially acceptable to be available until silly-o-clock at night? Long gone are the days of home-line chats (where you would sniff at a call past 9pm). It has never before been so easy to connect, 24/7.

I’m all for progress, I rely on social media for my business and to connect to my friends but until you turn it off, you don’t quite realise how it is having an effect.

Our bodies are not designed to cope with the amount of stimulation and BLUE LIGHT that you get online or on your smart phone, at a time of the day when your body needs to relax and engage the normal physiological processes that get us ready for sleep.

Getting adequate sleep, on a regular basis is so important in maintaining health:

• When we don’t sleep well it dysregulates our appetite hormones that control satiety, meaning you can overeat if you are feeling really tired.
• Melatonin, the hormone that we release in the evening to prepare us for sleep, also has powerful antioxidant effects in the body.
• If we have a bad night sleep we are at an increased risk of mood disorders such as anxiety and depression, poor short-term memory and even a build up of amyloid beta and tau (found in larger amounts in patients of Alzheimer’s disease)

Just remember that blue light = a bad night.

The best thing you can do to help your body feel refreshed, is to set a watershed for digital detox, this could be upwards of 8pm but try and make it a time you can realistically turn off technology such as your laptop and phone and do something less stimulating like read a book, have a bath or meditate.

Tech tips

• Most smart phones have a blue light filter that you can set to come on at the end of the day – thus reducing blue light exposure!
• You can set this on your computer too, there are lots of free programmes, but I use f.lux which works in a similar way. You programme when it wakes up & turns off!

Just remember that although these programmes will limit blue light, they won’t stop your brain from feeling like a hamster on a wheel. Turn it off and give yourself at least half an hour to unwind and decompress before you go to sleep.

Make your health a priority, you will work better and smarter with a clearer head the next day.