Veda #29 : Sleeping Time

Day 29
"Sleeping with the lights still on may cause health problem such as Leukimia, how'd that happen?"

How many of you sleep at night with the light still on?. Well, maybe after you read the explanation below, you might want to consider to kill your light whenever you sleep. As we may know, your night sleep is the most important state of sleep than any ther that you have on the afternoon, or evening, because most of our body's hormones regeneration happened at night. One of them called "Melatonin". Melatonin is a hormone made by the pineal gland, a small gland in the brain. Melatonin helps control your sleep and wake cycles. Very small amounts of it are found in foods such as meats, grains, fruits, and vegetables. You can also buy it as a supplement.
Now, how this connected with your health?and most of all, how did this connect with your sleeping habit?

Melatonin and its functions
Your body has its own internal clock that controls your natural cycle of sleeping and waking hours. In part, your body clock controls how much melatonin your body makes. Normally, melatonin levels begin to rise in the mid- to late evening, remain high for most of the night, and then drop in the early morning hours.
Melatonin also helps control the timing and release of female reproductive hormones. It helps determine when menstruation begins, the frequency and duration of menstrual cycles, and when menstruation ends. As an antioxidant, in many studies melatonin has been shown to protect DNA from oxidative damage that bring cancer. The scientist suggests that it may help strengthen the immune system.

Melatonin and its cycle
Many researchers believe that melatonin levels are related to the aging process. For example, young children have the highest levels of nighttime melatonin. Researchers believe these levels diminish as we age. In fact, the decline in melatonin may explain why many older adults have disrupted sleep patterns and tend to go to bed and wake up earlier than when they were younger.
Darkness stimulates the production of melatonin while light suppresses its activity. Exposure to excessive light in the evening or too little light during the day can disrupt the body’s normal melatonin cycles. The stronger the light at night, the less Melatonin will produced.

Melatonin and sleeping habit
Okay, now you've known enough about melatonin, now you should've been figure the connection between this and sleeping with the light still on. As explained above, darkness stimulates the production of Melatonin, a reduction in melatonin had been linked to cancer initiation and cancer progression. Since Melatonin also figured as an antioxidant that protect DNA from oxidative damage, Once damaged, DNA may mutate and carcinogenesis may occur. This is why people most likely having cancer, especially on children. Also, night workers were known to have a higher risk of breast cancer, because their exposure to lights in the day and night.

This should come to consideration to you who having a childs, don't forget to turn off the light whenever the children sleep, because their immune system aren't as well as adults. If you or your children having trouble with darkness, try to use a low intensity light bulb as consideration.

So, have you turn off your lights?better safe than sorry, right?