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Health

Even dim candlelight before bed is bright enough to disrupt sleep

By Clare Wilson

27 May 2019

a man lying on a bed reading a book

Can’t go out like a light? Sleep loss could be due to light sensitivity before bed

Stuart O’Sullivan/Getty

You may have heard that bright lighting in the evenings can disrupt your sleep. But it turns out some of us are more sensitive to this effect than others. A new study suggests people’s threshold for their body clock hormones being disturbed by late-night light can vary by more than fifty-fold.

ā€œFor some people, a dim reading light might as well be daylight, and for others it might as well be darkness,ā€ says Sean Cain at Monash University in Melbourne.

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