Feeling Blue with Blue Lights

Your mood changes like the waves of the ocean. You might suspect yourself of being bipolar. It might be the case, or it can be the notorious blue lights.

Blue lights can impact your mood. If you like exercising out in the sun or going for a light jog in the morning, you feel invigorated. The whole day you hum the Happy song.

Well, you feel happy. No reason is required. Those days were the best. Now you just put on a sad music track and feel yourself resonating with it.

You feel irritated and down all the time. You feel lonely. Maybe getting into a new relationship is a good idea. Or getting yourself a new hobby. Or maybe tone down your exposure to blue light. Less screen time and more healthy activities outdoors can get you out of your dark place.

How Can Lights Affect Your mood?

Natural light consists of many light spectrums. Blue light forms the high-energy visible lights. These lights not just make your surroundings brighter but affect your neurological system too. You feel alert, awake, and full of energy. Too many of these lights can make you feel awake all the time. Although you are tired, you find it hard to sleep.

When you try to sleep, you can feel your brain mechanics rotating and making useless calculations, making it impossible to sleep.

I have been through that. When you are tired, you will want to shut down your brain and sleep. That’s impossible with the blue lights messing with your circadian rhythm.

You will feel depressed and anxious with a lack of sleep. Continue the cycle for a week, and you will be irritated most of the time. If you are going through extreme mood swings, try to change your room’s lighting or avoid using digital devices before two hours of sleep.

Yellow light, on the other hand, makes you warm and relaxed. When you are sleeping, putting on yellow lights can be better than the cool white or blue lights.

How to make your mood better?

How you can feel less blue is probably by using less of the blue light-emitting gadgets. You can limit the exposure to blue light. It is not possible to completely do away with gadgets. Your work, connection, and everything are dependent on your little cellular device. You can, however, lessen the number of hours you spend on these gadgets.

You can try blue light glasses that block blue lights and have a comfortable vision. Blue light glasses are proven to be effective against blue lights. You can block the blue lights coming from the digital screens and all kinds of artificial sources. You will be able to have a sound sleep and wake up refreshed.

What other things can you do?

Blue light blocking glasses are a good solution to keep the blue lights to the bay, but some people are glasses-shy. For those, there are ways you can tackle this problem.

1. Reduce your screen time. If you are spending a lot of time on digital screens, you should look for better alternatives for recreation.
2. Switch to dark mode. If you habit checking your phone in the middle of the night, you can adjust the brightness mode to dark mode. You won’t get the glaring light hurting your eyes anymore.
3. Or switch to Automatic mode. I found this brilliant setting in my cheap android phone. You don’t have to keep changing the brightness from dark to bright every time you get to a place with different light. It was a hassle to squint eyes, shield the phone from the sun rays to check who was calling you when you were in the middle of the street. It automatically adjusts the brightness of the phone when you are outdoors or in the dark. I find the light comfortable in the dark. I don’t wake up shocked by the bright light of my phone anymore. It means lesser blue lights.
4. 20–20–20 Break rule. Whether you are a glasses user or not, you should adopt this break rule if you work on a computer. For every 20 minutes of working on the computer, take your eyes away for 20 seconds and stare at anything (not a digital screen) 20 feet away.
5. Gaming glasses for gaming. If you are a gaming addict, you should get your gears in place. Gaming glasses will aid your vision while gaming and also keep your mood in check.