This Could Be the Reason You Aren’t Sleeping Well

If you do this before you go to sleep, you could be slowly killing yourself!

Attention parents AND kids: New research shows that looking at screens (cell phones, tablets, laptops, and even some TVs) before bed can seriously mess with your sleep.

Not only is the screen time making it harder to fall asleep, but it also impacts just how sleepy vs. alert you are the next day.

Doctors say the light from the screens in the evening suppresses melatonin levels. The study directly compared reading with a light-emitting device and reading a printed book. The printed book is the healthy way to go, hands down.

The research shows: If you don't want to feel like a walking zombie during the day, but you must read before bed, make it an actual, printed book.

So how could reading a screen before bed actually HARM you? Well, because poor quality sleep, or not getting enough sleep, is linked to obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

In fact, chronic suppression of melatonin has also been associated with increased risk of certain cancers.

This study followed people who read on an iPad for four hours before bed for five days straight. That process was then repeated with printed books. And for some, the order was reversed -- they started with books and then switched to iPads.

The iPad readers took longer to fall asleep and had shorter REM sleep compared to traditional book readers. the iPad readers also secreted less melatonin, which helps regulate your sleep. They were also more tired than book readers the following day EVEN IF they got a full eight hours of sleep.

And in addition, iPad users may tend to stay up later, stimulating their minds with what they're looking at on the screen, and thereby wrecking their sleep even more.

If you absolutely must be on a screen before bed, at the very least try a filter that blocks blue light. Because the blue light is the culprit in suppressing your melatonin and hurting your quality of sleep.