BUT There are some issues here 9/
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Firstly, the relationship between blue light and poor health isn't as solid as it's often made out to be If you look at this systematic review, many of the studies have been conducted on 10 people or fewer!https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07420528.2018.1527773 …
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And while most of the research shows some STATISTICALLY significant changes to things like melatonin and brainwaves, the evidence is much less solid for CLINICALLY significant changes 11/
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The problem is that there just isn't a lot of research, outside of large epidemiological trials, that have managed to get enough people to say definitively whether there are actually health problems associated with blue light 12/
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It's also not obvious how long these changes to melatonin last. The systematic review I mentioned earlier found that they may be very transient, lasting only 15 mins How much does that impact your health? We just don't really know
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So what about all the blue light blockers? Well, there are plenty of studies on those too The problem is that they're mostly not very good 14/
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For example, this recent study took 14 people, and gave half blue light filtering glasses and the other half normal glasses They found some barely significant differences (p=0.035-0.049) It's not enormously convincing stuff 15/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022395617308592 …
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A 2017 systematic review could not identify a single study (!) of appropriate length and duration to make any statements about blue light blockers either way 16/pic.twitter.com/YzcjziwUvC
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Do blue light glasses work? Currently, best evidence suggests they probably don't do that much, but the best evidence is really not good 17/pic.twitter.com/qD4NoAcWNr
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To sum up: - Blue light might be bad - We aren't sure, it might not be - Blocking blue light might help - It also might be a total waste of time 18/pic.twitter.com/9OwkhF122S
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Best bet seems to be that blue light blocking software/glasses might improve your sleep a little, but it's hard to know if there's a real benefit to your health there 19/
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This is particularly true given that many of the studies are unblinded and rely on self-reported symptoms, which makes them MUCH less reliable as evidence 20/
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Podcast now out on this topic and recent headlineshttps://soundcloud.com/senscipod/episode-7-blue-light-glasses …
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