Electric light and laptops causing loss of sleep

Electric lights, including those illuminating laptop computers, smartphones, and tablets, often play a key role in causing people to sleep badly.

Artificial lights disrupt the body’s natural rhythm, affect chemicals in the brain and drive people to use stimulants such as caffeine to stay awake longer, according to Harvard academic Charles Czeisler.

Writing in the journal Nature, the professor of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School called for research to help develop “behavioural and technical” ways of counteracting the ill-effects of artificial light on modern sleeping patterns.