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Blue Blockers at Night and Insomnia Symptoms

NCT02698800 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 15

Last updated 2019-07-30

Study results available
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Summary

Under entrained conditions, humans maintain a consolidated nocturnal sleep episode that coincides with environmental darkness and endogenous melatonin secretion. Various factors, such as artificial light, can compromise this temporal harmony, resulting in sleep disruption. Light is the strongest synchronizer of the circadian clock, with direct inputs via the retinohypothalamic tract to brain centers regulating sleep and circadian rhythms. Evening light exposure can suppress melatonin secretion and worsen sleep. This is critical, since most individuals routinely expose themselves to light before bedtime. The high sensitivity of the circadian system to blue wavelength light indicates that modern light sources such as light-emitting diodes (LED) may have particularly deleterious effects on sleep. It is possible to selectively filter out blue light while maintaining other visible spectra with blue-blocking (BB) lenses. Wearing BB lenses before bedtime may present a simple, affordable, and safe method to improve sleep. None have yet investigated the effects of BB lenses on subjective and objective sleep in insomnia patients, while simultaneously exploring the effects on melatonin secretion.

Conditions

Interventions

DEVICE

Blue blocking (BB) lenses

Participants will wear blue blocking lenses each night for 1 week for 2 hours preceding bedtime.

DEVICE

Clear lenses

Participants will wear clear lenses each night for 1 week for 2 hours preceding bedtime.

Sponsors & Collaborators

Principal Investigators

  • Ari Shechter, Ph.D. · Columbia University

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
SINGLE
Model
CROSSOVER

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Max Age
65 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2016-03-31
Primary Completion
2017-03-31
Completion
2017-03-31

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

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Entities

Diseases
Companies

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT02698800 on ClinicalTrials.gov