F.lux, the solution to insomnia caused by the iPhone

I don't know how many of you will do it, but I'm one of those who can't just go to sleep, I need something to entertain me while I get sleepy and then leave it when my eyes close.

That something is my iPhone, I start playing, reading popular science articles, gossiping on social networks or responding to emails, however, precisely this practice is the cause that it costs me to sleep, I go to bed at 00: 00 and until 2:00 ~ 3: 00 I can't get to sleep…. But why is this happening?

When doing any task such as reading a book, reading on the tablet or iPhone, or even watching videos, we are exciting our brain by receiving such amounts of information, something that undoubtedly makes it more difficult for us to get to sleep, but this it is not the main cause of insomnia Because of this practice, it is only an influencing factor.

The true cause of «technological insomnia»And what differentiates people who read books and sleep without problems from people who use devices and cannot sleep is the screen, the brightness of this is precisely what slows down the production of melatonin, hormones responsible for preparing our body for its repose.

If you are reading this article right now from bed with your smartphone in the dark, do one thing, set the brightness to minimum and focus the screen towards the ceiling, you will see how despite having the brightness to the minimum, the screen illuminates a large area from the ceiling of the room, well, this is precisely what our eyes are suffering just a few centimeters from the screen, and this light that emanates from our device is capable of confusing our body and making it believe that it is not the time yet to rest, reason why we can't get to sleep.

But not everything is a matter of brightness, it is more related to the «blue light«If you look closely, the shades of your screens are usually bluish white, a cold temperature, this shade of white is precisely the one that, in addition to hurting our eyes by having it so close, is received by our eyes thanks to Melanopsin , which is found within the "sensors" that capture the colors inside our eyes and is sensitive to this type of light; as a consequence, our sleep is displaced between one and two hours.

There's a solution? The easiest thing would be to give up our devices and go to sleep even knowing that we may not be able to because some of us are very active at night and our brain begins to think things and things and we end up being kept awake by the amount of ideas or situations that we have. imagined. And since we are not going to leave our devices aside, I offer you another solution, its name is «F.lux«, And its operation is quite simple.

F.lux is in charge of adapting the colors of our screen to warmer tones, thus avoiding the excitation of the Melanopsin and reducing the light radiation caused by our screen. By now having a warmer tone, this will not harm our eyes and will not affect our sleep in the same way (it does not prevent the effect in full but it does reduce it drastically).

The creators affirm that our sight is designed to see sunlight at certain hours, for that reason the screens have that level of luminosity and that bluish hue, however after a certain hour it is normal for the sunlight to be absent, but our screens continue to project the same light and the same tonality. With F.lux our screens adjust the hue of their colors based on the timeIn other words, in broad daylight the screens will have the usual bluish color, but late at night their hue will become warmer so that their use does not harm our eyes or our sleep. For more information click here.

Installing F.lux is simple and free, it is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, As for iPhone and iPad with jailbreak (hence we publish it here), to download it you must enter its official website from your PC or Mac (click here) or search Cydia for "f.lux", which is available in the repo of telesphoreo (pre-installed in Cydia) for free.

As you can see, it is even available for personal computers, for people who for work or whatever need to be on their laptop or desktop at dawn.

Do the test now, once f.lux is installed on your iPhone or iPad, lower the brightness to the minimum and with the room in darkness, focus the screen on the ceiling. The result? Surely the light will not be projected on the ceiling, and if it does, it will be so weak that it is not well appreciated, now your eyes will thank you for the help and your body will compensate you with a placid and early sleep.