🪟Good curtains & nightlights for sleep 💤

A quick re-visiting of why to consider darker nights in the first place, with special emphasis on puberty, fertility and perimenopause

In an ideal world, curtains would be for nothing more than privacy and style

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This picture below shows the effect we are trying to avoid if artificial light is streaming in from outside:

Artificial light tends to have an effect of extending sunset-type light, which is confusing for the circadian rhythm

This effect of extended sunset makes it more difficult to fall asleep because it stimulates our central circadian clock to keep driving cortisol production.

Without artificial light after sunset, the body would naturally switch to secreting melatonin after a couple of hours.

Preventing artificial light from disrupting this circadian wind-down in the evening is the main reason people like blackout curtains.

However, there are also questions.

I addressed some of the questions to the best of my knowledge in my recent post about blackout curtains and toddler sleep here.

In today’s post, I want to get a little more into some of the reasons it is a good idea to get more in touch with the natural light-dark cycle, and how blackout curtains can help that process if you live in an urban area.

First, I wanted to say this: even if you can’t get full darkness, it’s better to make some effort than none.

Because a lot of people in the beginning can feel overwhelmed once they start thinking about circadian rhythms and getting back in touch with Nature.

Nighttime darkness not an all or nothing because of 2 main reasons:

1. Sensitivity to evening light can have up to 50-fold variation between healthy adults (and even more so when thinking about adults vs children)

2. Being in a brighter nighttime environment over time leads to chronic melatonin suppression with a simultaneous increased tolerance to the light (so if you are used to it, your melatonin will be less suppressed in the same environment than someone who is not)

So if you have to take it slow with making changes (something I hear about a lot), relax! Don’t let your ideals get in the way of progress.

Even if you can’t get full darkness at night, it’s better to make some effort than none.

Making progress at all puts you way ahead of the curve with regard to circadian health.

The other reason I don’t like to stress about blackout curtains is usually, the light inside our homes is much greater than the light we are blocking from outside.

Watching TV on an unfiltered screen, opening the fridge door or using a bright bathroom light probably does more to your melatonin than a little glow coming through the edge of your blackout curtain. 

As lighting technology has gotten more efficient, it has gotten more disruptive to our hormones and circadian rhythms.

So let’s look again at why we want to make our nights darker.

Why not just let the light shine at night?

The reason not to have bright or white artificial light after dark is it makes it so your melatonin doesn’t start flowing at the right time.

Anything brighter than the light of the moon, or a single candle flame, will suppress melatonin, “extend sunset”, and trick your body into behaving as though it is still daytime.

When your circadian rhythm is disrupted like that, you are missing out on vital repair and antioxidant effects that have acute effects on a given day, and can add up to big effects like contributing to chronic health conditions over time. 

Plus, the bright light tells the body to keep pumping cortisol, which then sucks the precursors to the sex hormones.

Here’s where you can see how over-emphasis on cortisol production takes away from progesterone, etc:

Cholesterol is the precursor to many hormones, including Vitamin D and Progesterone, both key for fertility. But, with improper light activation, cholesterol instead becomes excess cortisol. But this is a post for another day 🙃

TLDR: It’s especially key for puberty, fertility, and perimenopause to have enough darkness each night because of the special need for optimal hormonal states in these stages of life.

An eye mask can work if you aren’t up for changing your home lighting yet. However, if you take the mask off in a bright environment, you get what feels like an especially bright flash that shuts off your melatonin.

A sudden change in brightness is actually worse than a gradual one.

Do you need blackout curtains, really?

I would say you absolutely need blackout curtains (and the only time I have ever used them) if you live in a home where busy traffic lights and vehicle headlights can shine into the home. That’s much worse than a quiet street glow filtered through a semi-blackout curtain. 

The really big deal about these bright flashes is it takes about 2 hours to get back into melatonin production instead of cortisol after a bright light. And if you are getting consistent bright light, a single night can significantly and measurably affect other hormones, too (especially metabolic responses)¹.

This is because nerves trigger the hormone cortisol, but the hormone melatonin is only released after certain factors build up to a threshold in cells.

But you don’t need to know or understand that because the really cool thing about circadian rhythm work is it feels hedonic.

All you have to do is NOT ignore how terrible it feels when the nighttime light is suddenly too bright!

Avoid it as much as you can because it feels good and this is a healthy signal from your body that it doesn’t like a bright light in the middle of the night.

Here’s where I described how devastating this can be for new moms who don’t know about traditional postpartum care:

mollie.eastman

A post shared by @mollie.eastman

And the light on the skin will have some amount of effect on the body’s processes, it’s just not as strong as the light directly through the eye. 

Hope that makes sense and helps explain why it’s important and hopefully helps with figuring out an effective strategy for your home.

And also why moving with the flow of what you can do and just doing your best is the best strategy :)

If you’d like to do a 1-1 consult about this, here’s my booking page. Rates are currently US $138 for up to 90 minutes with dates open on Mondays and Saturdays:

And if you’re looking for good sleep lights, Block Blue Light is having a sale (use code NIKKO for 10% off at checkout).

1. Albreiki, M. S., Middleton, B., & Hampton, S. M. (2017). A single night light exposure acutely alters hormonal and metabolic responses in healthy participants. Endocrine connections, 6(2), 100–110. https://doi.org/10.1530/EC-16-0097