[HN Gopher] Blue-light filtering spectacles probably make no dif...
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Blue-light filtering spectacles probably make no difference to
sleep quality
Author : clumsysmurf
Score : 43 points
Date : 2023-08-18 18:35 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (medicalxpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medicalxpress.com)
| treprinum wrote:
| Without Gunnars I can look at a display for 5 hours before eye
| strain sets in, with Gunnars I can look for 12 hours. So either
| they used shoddy lens/filters or I am just special somehow.
| aljgz wrote:
| Placebo effect, maybe?
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Maybe. We also need to know whether they have a non-tinted
| but still "computer glasses" control. I think computer
| glasses have other tweaks specifically for viewing screens.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Well Gunnars are actually amber tinted. At the end of TFA it
| says, "Filtering out higher levels of blue light would require
| the lenses to have an obvious amber tint, which would have a
| substantial effect on color perception."
|
| This implies that they studied lenses that aren't tinted, which
| obviously can't be that effective...
| karmakaze wrote:
| > which would have a substantial effect on color perception.
|
| Our vision system is pretty good at compensating for white
| balance. What I've noticed is with reduced higher
| wavelengths, my visual acuity drops substantially.
|
| These glasses may not improve sleep quality, but my
| experience is that it increases sleep quantity as looking at
| a white display keeps me awake longer like it's still
| daylight hours, where as with reduced blues my body tends to
| think it's near bedtime and I do tire and hit the sack
| sooner.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Not sure about the effectiveness in "lens-form" but the dimming
| that apps like f.lux and on mobile definitely feel like they help
| turn down the harshness of bright displays in dark rooms. I have
| sworn by those apps for like 20 years. It's just like using dark
| mode. "Easier on the eyes". Less strain on the muscles.
| gowld wrote:
| Phone/computer apps actually reduce the blue substantially and
| visible, unlike the nearly-transparent lenses in the article.
| walterbell wrote:
| https://gembared.com/blogs/musings/the-best-daytime-white-li...
|
| _> Do white LEDs really exist that are low in blue light,
| balanced with red, low flicker, and low EMF? ... especially for
| LEDs, we want lower Kelvin which helps minimize the blue light
| that many people have had issues with LEDs in the past. For this
| review we mostly selected 2700K LEDs as it usually has a natural
| feeling balanced spectrum that is lower in Blue light. But for
| office areas during the daytime the 3000K versions might be
| better._
| Stratoscope wrote:
| A couple of months ago we had some neighbors over, a couple and
| their two sons, for an early dinner in the back yard.
|
| They just got back from a family vacation, and one of the sons
| showed me some photos he took on his iPhone.
|
| The photos were in focus and well composed, but everything had a
| strong orange cast. They almost reminded me of Kodacolor
| negatives [1] but of course they were positives, not negatives,
| just very orange.
|
| I meant to ask if he was using some artistic filter or manual
| white balance, but I figured "he's having fun showing his
| pictures, let him run with it."
|
| Then the other son showed some photos on his phone, and they were
| orange too!
|
| It wasn't until later when I got a glimpse of their mom's phone
| that I realized what the problem was. She didn't have a photo on
| the screen, just some text or a web page that would have a white
| background.
|
| You guessed it, that was orange too. And I finally realized they
| all had Apple's Night Shift turned on.
|
| Well, if nothing else, this gives me a good excuse to get
| together with them again so I can see their photos as they were
| meant to be seen. :-)
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20101128030127/http://photo.net/...
| gitpusher wrote:
| That may be true. But for people like me who have good eyesight
| and don't need glasses, they provide a socially acceptable way to
| wear cool-looking glasses in the workplace.
| jrockway wrote:
| Yeah, none of these glasses filter out anything close to "all"
| blue light, because nobody would buy them if they only had
| red+green color vision.
|
| As an aside, there was some time in the recent past where blue
| antireflective coatings on eyeglasses were popular. I actually
| had to make a special request for the old purple/green coating
| for a few years, because the blue reflections were so distracting
| while working in an office with overhead fluorescent lights. Many
| years have passed since that trend and modern coatings seem more
| blue-ish than purple/green, but they aren't distracting at all.
| I'm actually shocked how little light modern lenses reflect at
| all.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| I didn't understand how people could claim they have "blue
| light blocking glasses" with clear lenses. I can literally see
| the blue light coming through it!
|
| I think Gunnars was early to the market and they actually have
| amber tint. Before that I would buy amber tinted safety glasses
| meant for working with lasers. I still take these on trips if
| I'm staying somewhere unfamiliar... You don't know if the place
| is going to have hideous harsh blue-white LEDs. Fortunately
| most places have figured out the need for comfortable warm
| lighting. All the computer operating systems have a built-in
| night mode too. I stopped short of putting an amber film over
| the Kindle...
| EA-3167 wrote:
| I have some blue-light blockers which I use only in bed, when
| reading before going to sleep. They are bulky with 'side
| boards' to block light, and they turn everything into a sort
| of orange, undifferentiated hellscape.
|
| The upside is that they seem to work, the downside is that it
| really only works if you're at a point in your day where
| you're ONLY looking at text.
| GoToRO wrote:
| Do these glasses prevent you from fully waking up? Indoors
| environment wirh little light, also block the blue light and you
| can be sleepy all day.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Yesterday's New York Times article about this:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/well/live/blue-light-glas...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| One of these "Blue blocker" coatings was $10 to add to my $400
| (sticker price "$1400" because luxotica is a fucking racket)
| glasses. I knew there was little real research on such a thing,
| but in the moment I guess I didn't really care about wasting a
| couple bucks. Very unlike me really.
|
| I can't actually tell that there's anything different about them.
| foobarian wrote:
| I've been getting increasingly fed up with the US optical
| services and the slow feedback loop. For the price of a pair of
| glasses I could get this [1] and just choose my prescription
| however I like!
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/UCanSee-Optical-Trial-Metal-
| Aluminum/...
| marvindanig wrote:
| Have you ever noticed that B(lue) and G(reen) are the center most
| frequencies of the visible spectrum--VIBGYOR? If the human eye is
| naturally adapted for blue skies and green forests, how could the
| blue wavelength ever be harmful to our eyes? Those are the
| healthiest frequencies our eyes "consume!"
|
| So much bullshit is marketed these days that it is impossible to
| sleep well.
| Symmetry wrote:
| During most of the evolution of our genus bright blue or green
| light meant it was daytime and hence time to be awake. But the
| red light from fires would often be present when our ancestors
| were sleeping. It isn't that you should avoid bright blue or
| green light in general, it's that you should avoid it for maybe
| an hour or so before you go to bed until when you want to wake
| up.
| nomel wrote:
| > But the red light from fires would often be present when
| our ancestors were sleeping.
|
| I don't believe this is related. I believe it's simply that
| blue is the best/easiest/earliest color. The circadian rhythm
| is ancient, used by bacteria, plants, and mammals [1], long
| before humans had fire. Blue is most energetic, and is all
| that can be seen in the depths of the ocean, where life
| mostly likely originated.
|
| [1]
| https://schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2023/04/sensing-
| bl...
| croes wrote:
| We have way better receptors for dark and bright, so for that
| color reception isn't necessary.
| mgiampapa wrote:
| Where did you go to school? It's ROYGBIV you monster!
| jayd16 wrote:
| Endianness strikes again.
| talldrinkofwhat wrote:
| Circadian rhythms are primary drivers for various hormones in
| your body (e.g. melatonin, body temps, cortisol levels). These
| rhythms are tightly tied to external/evolutionary triggers.
| Yours body resets its internal clock* based on external cues,
| the strongest of which are eating and exposure to daylight.
| Since we don't have little clocks saying it's 6:05 in our
| heads, the body uses blue light hitting the retinas as a proxy.
| It's the knock-on-effects of having misaligned cortisol levels
| (which further induce lack of sleep / stress) that are the
| problem, not the blue light.
|
| *The natural rhythm of each individual differs, hence the
| cave/space experiments where some people naturally fall into a
| ~25h cycle [due to lack of external cues]).
| steve1977 wrote:
| Well the theory behind it doesn't say ,,blue is unhealthy or
| harmful" but ,,blue is daytime".
|
| Hence the idea to filter out blue at times when there is no
| blue sky in nature (aka at night).
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(page generated 2023-08-18 23:02 UTC)