Photo by Aaron
I have my favorite TV shows. I watch them every week, and I’ll tell you which ones they are. I’ll bet you have your own favorites. Sometimes I regret that I have must-see programs. Recently I’ve been reading about the impact hours of TV watching a day has on my nightly sleep, and the conclusions aren’t good.
Then I realize I didn’t need to read anything to know that. Most research I’ve been reading about is centered on children and teens, but as an adult I know I need to consider the effect TV has on me too. I love my favorite shows, but they are actually becoming the nightly enemy of my sleep. Funny how the news programs never deal with this subject, do they? I need to remember this: the shows I watch are sponsored by companies that make prescription drug remedies for people who can’t sleep!
TV is stimulating to your mind and therefore it’s not helpful when you’re trying to fall asleep. Watching TV in bed or using it to help you fall asleep is only putting more images in your mind for the brain to process and think about. Your bed should only be used for about two things. The more you train your body and mind that way, the easier it will be to fall asleep when you crawl in at night.
Here’s the bad news (I wonder if I’ll follow my own advice).
All of us should really cut out as much TV as possible from our lives. The research done on children by Dr. Greg Germain of the Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital shows even as little as 2 hours of TV per day causes resistance in going to bed, trouble falling asleep, shorter total night sleep time, and therefore more daytime sleepiness in school-aged children. This has become a highly studied area and further correlations have been made since Dr. Germain’s study showing that TV watching and too little sleep are synergistic and increase the risk of children becoming overweight. This puts children at a higher risk for obesity and other related conditions later in life (“Short Sleep Duration in Infancy and Risk of Childhood Overweight” Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, Vol. 162, 4).
TV is not the only culprit; the Internet and video games are just as guilty of causing the same problems especially when used right before trying to go to sleep. Since I haven’t found as much research on adults, I think we should still do our bodies a favor and not give them any more visual and mental stimulation of this kind right before bed than necessary. Try it and see if your quality of sleep and duration of sleep improves! Oh, my favorite TV shows are: House, 24, The Closer, Lie to Me, and American Idol. What are yours?
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