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A note: the computer glasses you may see advertised that are clear (or at most have a mild yellow tint to them) do almost nothing to help with melatonin suppres
by jml7c5 7y ago
A note: the computer glasses you may see advertised that are clear (or at most have a mild yellow tint to them) do almost nothing to help with melatonin suppression. Light-based melatonin suppression is largely mediated by light receptors on the retina called ipRGCs. They are the third class of photoreceptors, along with rods and cones. They respond in the very approximate range of 380nm (violet) to 600nm (yellow), though suppression is diminished as one strays further from the peak of ~475nm, tapering off to zero around the limits I have given. [1] So if you want lenses that actually work, expect very heavy color distortion.
This also applies to the fancier lenses on prescription glasses. If you are optically challenged like myself, and have bought glasses recently, you've probably been upsold to lenses that block short wavelength blue & near UV light. For example, Zenni's branding is BlokZ, which are apparently designed to to prevent "FryEye". There may be some benefit to blocking short wavelength blue (and there is obviously benefit to blocking UV), they will not help with sleep.
For the purpose of my sleep cycle, I prefer to use software filters (f.lux, etc.) rather than colored lenses. As long as the blue (and green, to a lesser extent) subpixels on my display aren't lit, it's just as effective. In fact it's a bit nicer, as it's possible to "redscale" the image based on luminosity rather than just not seeing blue any more. (I am not sure if f.lux is capable of this, as I do not use it.) To limit the effect of environmental lights, I use very warm LEDs in the evening and dim them down low as the night goes on. I'm tempted to mix in some red and orange ones right near bedtime to get an almost firelight effect.
Unrelated, but for general eye strain at the end of the day: get some reading glasses, even if you don't actually need them to read. They'll let your ciliary muscle relax by making your screen seem to be at optical infinity. If you already have glasses, just take your prescription and throw +2 or so SPH on there. (Or, if you don't mind being a bit of an annoyance, pop to the drug store and try on some pairs on your regular glasses until you find the right diopter. Or, even better, calculate it using the thin lens approximation.) You may want to add a prism if you're prone to being cross-eyed.
[1]: While not from a scientific publication, and obviously heavily smoothed, this graph gives an idea: https://www.rasc.ca/sites/default/files/Retina_Spectrum.jpg https://www.rasc.ca/sites/default/files/Retina_Spectrum.jpg