Using your phone in bed could be costing you an hour of sleep

As well as accidentally dropping your phone on your face (let’s be honest, it’s happened to ALL of us), using your phone before bed has another negative impact. According to sleep expert Paul Gringras, being on your phone or tablet can seriously disrupt your sleep patterns and could cause you to lose one hour each night (that’s a lot when you have little ones to run after). It apparently has something to do with certain wavelengths of light emitted from smartphones and how they affect the production of melatonin (the chemical needed to fall asleep). Via tumblr.com Professor Gringras argues that such phones contain too much of this light and that devices should be fixed to include a “sleep mode” which will combat the issue. He told BBC News: "That is great for use in the day, but awful for use at night. "There is converging data to say if you are in front of one of these devices at night-time it could prevent you falling asleep by an extra hour." While we often find ourselves trying to catch up on the day’s events while tucked up in bed at the end of the day, we are more than happy to have an extra hour of sleep… in fact, we’d probably take an extra 10 minutes if it was going!