A lot of people believe that waking up or falling asleep has to be as easy as turning a light switch on or off. Unfortunately or “Thank God”, our body is not working like that. Falling asleep needs time, since the organism has to replace the in the body situated active and stress-hormones especially with the sleeping hormone melatonin. Here, our eyes are playing an important role. When they perceive the low light intensity of the evening sky they signalize the inner clock to stop producing active hormones. This, of course takes time and also is the reason why we normally only get tired after a couple of hours after sunset, want to go to bed and are ready for sleep. During this transition period the body starts to convert hormones like Serotonin into the sleeping hormone Melatonin. This also initiates the release of other sleeping hormones like Adenosine and Orexin.
Pale blue light as waking-up-switch
The movement of the sun is also responsible for our “wake-up-switch”.
As soon as the darkness is merging into dusk and further into dawn, the inner clock stops the Melatonin production and boots production of Serotonin, Adrenalin and Cortisol. Within the next hours, this chemical level gets filled up and we awake and hopefully feel slept off and full of energy.
During the day the colour spectrum of the natural light is changing – in the morning the blue component is dominating, in the evening the red component. Our rhythm of life has taken over this experience.
Several studies prove that the blue spectrum of the light mainly is important for the regulation of the inner clock. The discovery of the spectrum of efficacy lead to another observation: this blue is the same blue like the blue morning sky. Blue light in the visible spectrum of very low brightness (pale blue) is for example producing the exact same or even higher reaction of the inner clock like brighter white light. In spite the fact, that white light is containing blue.
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