Filtering "blue light"

[Dominique]

We know the "blue light" emitted by electronic displays (TV, computer, tablet, smartphone) is detrimental to sleep, especially if/when exposed to it during the few hours that precede bedtime. I just read a blog post that mentioned using these cheap glasses an hour before going to bed (if watching a display during that time):

The "official" description lists them as safety glasses, but if you read reviews on Amazon, you’ll see a lot of them touting the glasses as "sleep aids". For instance, this one:

Is anyone using similar glasses for the purpose of blocking "blue light"? I thought that – for the price (less than 8 bucks) – it would be worth giving it a shot. 

[Calathea77]

I've been doing this for years.  I have a circadian rhythm disorder called Non-24 Sleep-Wake Syndrome which means that unless I manipulate my light and dark signals, I am on a 25 hour day, falling asleep an hour later every day.  I initially treated this using a bright lightbox in the morning, which got me on a 24 hour pattern but still falling asleep far too late (Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome).  Then I found darkness therapy, which means cutting out blue light for a few hours before bed and during the night.  You don't have to use honking big safety goggles, and there are lots of orange tinted glasses around with reviews for this purpose.  You do need to make sure they block 100% of blue light, which is a fairly strong tint.  I tried it out briefly with orange light bulbs (still useful, as some light gets in around the edges) and screen filters (f.lux on the "ember" setting will do), and the results were so dramatic that I went out and got an orange-tinted pair of prescription specs made up.  A good optician should be able to sort out the right tint, if you need prescription glasses.  There's a fair amount of research about darkness therapy for sleep by now, and also on how nighttime light exposure affects other things such as hormones.  The breast cancer rate triples in night shift workers, for instance.

[Dominique]

@Calathea77: sorry to hear about your medical condition, and thanks for all the insight you provided. My understanding is the idea behind using large safety goggles is they could fit on top of existing glasses (for people wearing prescription glasses, like me). Good to know it would be possible to have orange-tinted prescription glasses.

[Calathea77]

Oh, I tried that.  It was horribly uncomfortable.  If they're cheap and you can return them, it's worth a shot, especially since there's far more of a range available these days and you may find better ones than I used.  Then you can see whether it's worth the cost of getting a new pair of glasses made up.  I ended up writing a website about my experiences with it all.

[Darshan]

For gaming, I used a pair of Gunnars and they worked wonders! They are also useful just for looking at screens if you have a deskjob too or for any blue light filtering. These glasses really provide much more clarity on the screen. Also you can get them in prescription and come in a variety of styles.

Just visit here. I got the Intercepts and they are really nice! 😄 Hope this helps.

[Calathea77]

Those aren't going to block blue light, unless the tint is totally different to how it is in the picture. They should be bright orange, not a pale yellow like that. The ones the OP linked to look like the right colour. Not necessarily comfortable over prescription specs, but the right colour.

[BWright1175]

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@Calathea77 wrote:
Those aren't going to block blue light, unless the tint is totally different to how it is in the picture. They should be bright orange, not a pale yellow like that. The ones the OP linked to look like the right colour. Not necessarily comfortable over prescription specs, but the right colour.

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The website states that it's a patented technology which is a combination of the tint color and special coatings which result in the blue light being blocked.

[Calathea77]

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@BWright1175 wrote:

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@Calathea77 wrote:
Those aren't going to block blue light, unless the tint is totally different to how it is in the picture. They should be bright orange, not a pale yellow like that. The ones the OP linked to look like the right colour. Not necessarily comfortable over prescription specs, but the right colour.

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The website states that it's a patented technology which is a combination of the tint color and special coatings which result in the blue light being blocked.

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I strongly doubt it.  They look to me more like they'd block 10% of blue light.  There is no coating that I've heard of that blocks blue light without changing the colour of the lens, and I have been looking into this in a great deal of depth for years.  Boots made the same claim over lenses of their which were that colour, and the Advertising Standards Authority told them to stop doing it as they were only filtering out 20% o....  This sounds like more of the same.  It's really easy to prove, anyway.  Get a blue LED light, they're exactly the colour in question (465nm, which blue LEDs naturally peak at), and shine it through the specs.  Does the colour go through?  If you have the specs on, can you still see the colour?

My guess is that since bright orange lenses are a hard sell, companies get around it by flogging a "blue filter" which only removes a bit of blue light and is thus useless, instead of "blue blocker" lenses, which is what is needed for this purpose.  Only they imply that the "blue filter" is a full blue blocker.

[Calathea77]

There's been a similar problem with f.lux implying that it completely filters out blue light, by the way.  In its earlier incarnations, it really didn't.  It cut down on blue light, but that was more about reducing eyestrain caused by glare.  Then they introduced the "darkroom setting", which cut out both blue and green, leaving you with only red and black.  This is drastic enough that sites get completely changed, and I found it unusable.  I don't think that was popular.  Now they offer a feature where you can take it all the way down to 1200K, the "Ember" setting, which does appear to filter out blue light while leaving red and green in place.  This one is actually usable.  It's a special option you have to go to some trouble to unlock, though, and it's harder to access the setting.  I suspect few people have realised it's there.  Meanwhile, f.lux are continuing to enjoy their reputation for software that fully blocks blue light, even though most people using it aren't getting that feature and don't realise it.

[Calathea77]

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@BWright1175 wrote:

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@Calathea77 wrote:
Those aren't going to block blue light, unless the tint is totally different to how it is in the picture. They should be bright orange, not a pale yellow like that. The ones the OP linked to look like the right colour. Not necessarily comfortable over prescription specs, but the right colour.

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The website states that it's a patented technology which is a combination of the tint color and special coatings which result in the blue light being blocked.

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OK, I was curious, so I rang Gunnar.  Their amber lenses block 65% of blue light, and the guy I spoke to clearly hadn't been given much information about how all of this works, and was saying some rather odd and inaccurate things.  I honestly doubt the 65% too, unless the tint is a lot stronger than it looks on the website.  Anyway, that's definitely not a blue-blocking lens.

[bioreactorgirl]

@Dominique: Not sure about these glasses or any particular tint for blocking the blue light. I can tell you that I work in front of a computer 8 hours per day and found that when I started this job, I had trouble sleeping. I only need reading glasses but my eye doctor prescribed "computer" reading glasses with a UV blocker of some kind for when I am at the computer or using my iPad to read. It worked. I began sleeping normally again. And the lenses are not orange. They are clear looking through them with just a hint of blue to purple when you look at the lenses on their side.

[Calathea77]

Interesting.  All the research has been about light at around the wavelength 465nm, which is blue, plus a little research about green light.  Blue definitely suppresses melatonin production, they're not sure about green.  UV light, as far as I know, isn't relevant.