A new study has revealed that exposure to light, even a small amount, may cause serious health problems in the elderly.
“People should do their best to avoid or reduce the amount of light they are exposed to during the day,” Phyllis Zee, senior study author and chief of sleep medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois, told CNN. sleep”.
The study analyzed the role of light in sleep in healthy adults in their twenties, where it was observed that sleeping only one night with dim light from a television set, for example, led to higher blood sugar and heart rate in young people during the sleep experience.
Previous studies have shown that a high nighttime heart rate is a risk factor for future heart disease and early death, while high blood sugar levels are a sign of insulin resistance, which can eventually lead to type 2 diabetes.
Although the amount of light was small, it created a deficit in “slow-wave” and “rapid eye movement” sleep, two of the stages of sleep in which cell renewal occurs, according to the study.
The researchers gave 552 men and women, aged 63 to 84, a small device like a wristwatch that measured sleep cycles, average movement and exposure to light.
“We actually measure the amount of light a person is exposed to through a sensor and compare that to their sleep-wake activity over a 24-hour period,” Zee explained.
In a secondary analysis, the study found that those who were exposed to greater amounts of light at night were also more likely to have diabetes, obesity or high blood pressure.
In addition, Zee noted that people exposed to higher levels of light during sleep were more likely to fall asleep later and wake up later, which increases the risk of cardiovascular and metabolic disorders.