Why do you have to sleep in complete darkness and not go to bed with the light on?

I am afraid of darkness. Is it true. Not too much, of course, not to the point of pathology, and not always, but overall I’m afraid. And it all started in childhood. I remember one day I didn’t sleep all night: my mother’s coat on the hanger, which after cleaning had been hung on a nail to air out, suddenly “turned” into the Queen of Spades. I knew, of course, that it was a coat, but fear has big eyes! Moreover, my imagination did its job - the Lady almost naturally “moved” and seemed to be looking at me. I called my grandmother. She was a determined woman, sometimes even tough; after the war, huts like these were rebuilt themselves and the fields were plowed.

Statistics

1. Out of 100 mothers, 80 note that of all types of fear, their children are characterized by a fear of the dark. Thus, 8 out of 10 children aged 3 to 10 years are afraid of dark rooms.
2. In 80% of cases, fear of the dark is inherited. If the parents had it, then with a high degree of probability the child will also be afraid of the dark.
3. For 10% of people on the planet, the fear of the dark persists throughout their lives.
4. In 2% it develops into a disease - nyctophobia.

Causes

Fear of darkness is not fear of the absence of light as such. This is the fear of the unknown and unpleasant that may be hiding in this darkness. Since in the darkness our brain does not receive a clear signal from our visual organs about the safety of the environment, some uncertainty arises. And if the imagination is rich, then it will quickly “complete” the missing elements. And please - the scary picture is ready! Children, as we know, have a greater ability to fantasize, which is why children's fears are so common.

Fear, as scientists have found, begins in a child during intrauterine development. It is then that the baby is already able to feel if the mother is worried, scared or very worried.

An unborn baby, of course, is not yet able to understand what exactly is happening, but his nervous system and brain perfectly “remember” the biological reaction to fear. As a result, the embryo gains the ability to fear. True, it’s still instinctive.

Melatonin for sleep and more

Interested in what the hormone melatonin is and what its reduced concentration entails, scientists conducted a number of studies, the results of which turned out to be extremely interesting.

It turned out that melatonin not only helps you fall asleep quickly, but also affects other vital processes occurring in the body.

Prevention of depression

A lack of melatonin can provoke conditions close to depression. This was shown by experiments conducted on animals that were constantly illuminated at night.

The test hamsters became lethargic, they lost their appetite, and they even stopped being interested in their favorite treats. You will say that the person is not a hamster, but people who regularly sleep in the light complain of very similar symptoms.

Slow down aging

The second important function of melatonin is to neutralize free radicals that integrate into healthy cells and provoke their premature destruction. Produced by a gland located in the skull, melatonin primarily protects against brain cell destruction, preserving our memory and clarity of mind.

Now it becomes clear why children who slept in the light all the time showed worse academic results.

Acceleration of metabolism

Another experiment showed that a test animal that sleeps with a constantly burning light bulb (even in dim lighting!) quickly gains excess weight on the same diet that previously did not give weight gain.

A lack of melatonin leads to a slowdown in metabolic processes. And if you consider that chronic lack of sleep is constantly accompanied by mild apathy and a reluctance to move a lot, the process goes even faster in a person.

When does fear become conscious?

1. Children who sleep alone experience fear of the dark more often than others. Therefore, indirectly, the fear of darkness is the fear of loneliness. Even newborns can experience it.
2. If parents are into horror stories. “If you don’t eat porridge, I’ll call Babai” or “If you don’t stop playing around, an evil sorcerer will come for you!” In the dark, when a child relaxes before going to bed and mentally, like adults, replays the day’s experiences in his head, it is this “Babai” or “evil sorcerer” that can materialize in the child’s imagination in a dark room.
3. If elders watch horror films in the presence of a child, they tell creepy stories. Remember, the brain of a child, even a small and unintelligent one, captures vivid images and then reproduces them at the most inopportune moment.
4. If a child often watches news broadcasts with adults. Any randomly seen image in a story about a disaster, murder or attack can cause fear of the dark.
5. If the child is prohibited from doing too much.
6. If serious conflicts flare up in the family, in which children are drawn into.

There are several other factors that influence the development of fear of the dark. Oddly enough, only children in the family are more susceptible to this type of phobia than others. When there is no sister or brother to contact, the child's anxiety level is higher.

In addition, the fear of the dark is often characteristic of children of “adult” parents. The older the mother is at the time of the birth of the child, the more she and her household worry about the “late” baby. They run at the first call, ooh and ahh and throw up their hands. As a result, they grow up with a neurasthenic, easily excitable, infantile baby, very susceptible to fears, and not just the dark.

Children from single-parent families are often afraid of the dark. Moreover, the first “bells” of fear come, as a rule, during the period of divorce or the departure of one of the parents.

How to preserve melatonin?

Why you need to sleep in the dark became clear during experiments that discovered the important role of melatonin in the human body. But is it possible to somehow stimulate its production? What can be done to ensure that melatonin concentrations do not decrease to a dangerous threshold?

• Remove all gadgets with indicator lights from the room or disconnect them from the power supply. This will significantly improve the condition of brain and nervous system cells that can detect even weak electromagnetic impulses.
• Immediately before falling asleep, turn off all light sources: night lights, LEDs, aroma lamps, etc. You can only leave devices equipped with a timer that will turn them off no later than an hour after falling asleep (but you will also steal this hour of full sleep from yourself!).
• Wear a tight bandage over your eyes. Learning to sleep in it is easier than it seems. And the quality of sleep will increase noticeably, especially if your curtains are not too thick and the light of passing cars, the moon or street lamps comes into the windows from the street.
• Enrich your diet with foods high in tryptophan. This substance is necessary for the production of melatonin. Bananas, milk, cottage cheese, oatmeal, tomatoes, nuts and legumes eaten 2-3 hours before bedtime can significantly speed up falling asleep.
• If you wake up at night, try to do without the light on. As a last resort, install dim nightlights that, when turned on, will slow down but not completely stop the production of melatonin.
• Avoid night shifts. Long-term work in this mode disrupts the biological clock and after a year, more than half of the people who work at night begin to suffer from insomnia.
• Do not take sleeping pills or medications with melatonin. Why should the body strain on its own if it can get the substances necessary for falling asleep from the outside?! Such drugs are quickly addictive, and it is very difficult to wean yourself off them.
• Lead an active lifestyle. Everything that promotes the production of serotonin (favorite activities, physical activity, positive emotions) stimulates the pineal gland. This means that it will work properly even at night.
• Have sex! No one has yet come up with a better sleeping pill! This includes moderate physical activity, an explosion of positive emotions, and powerful stimulation of the pineal gland, which, following serotonin, will quickly switch to melatonin.

And most importantly, remember that a healthy lifestyle is the key to good, sound sleep. The body, not exhausted by artificial stimulants and not poisoned by toxins and poisons, usually does not have problems with sleep.

What should parents do?

Talk to the child

In all seriousness, it is good to find out from him what exactly he is afraid of, why, who lives in his dark room, what he can do to the baby and why he came in the first place? In other words, this way you can establish the factor that gave rise to the innate fear program.

Control what you see

It is necessary to ensure that the child does not have access to watching bloody and frightening films, or playing the same computer games. Any fear is like a fire; if you add wood to it, it will flare up more and more.

What should parents not do?

1. Criticize and laugh at the child. If your baby admits that he is afraid to be alone in his room or to go to bed in the evening because it is scary in the dark, do not criticize him or call him a coward. For you, these horror stories lurking near the closet are unreal. For a child, they are the most real. And he is not capricious when he communicates his fear, as some parents think, but expresses trust in you. He shares with you his main problem.
2. Knock out “wedge with wedge.” This is my grandmother's method. If a child is afraid of the dark, you should not deliberately lock him in a dark room so that he realizes that there is no reason to be afraid. This can cause panic and perpetuate the horror, making it a real phobia.
3. Under no circumstances should you join this game. If a child says that there is a dragon living under his bed, there is no need to look there and exclaim: “Oh, what a scary one! If you don’t obey, he’ll definitely come out and bite you by the leg!” The kid will believe it. And the fear will increase significantly.

Children's holiday

A child’s stay in the kingdom of Morpheus is somewhat different from that of an adult. And it depends on age. Children under two years old do not have a stable routine; they sleep and stay awake for an hour and a half. Gradually, the regime is more or less strengthened, clear boundaries appear between getting up, daytime rest and bedtime. And over time, the child adapts to a common life with adults. But at the same time it has its own specifics.

1. More dreams, which causes increased activity, anxiety, and reaction to the slightest stimuli.
2. The regime is still in its infancy, and the main task of parents is to facilitate this, that is, to monitor the light and turn it off on time.
3. At the hormonal level, it corresponds to an adult.
4. Children are actively growing, undergoing natural deformations (for example, tooth growth) and getting sick (rubella, chickenpox, colds), which often affects the quality of their night's rest. In 25% of cases, the development of real insomnia is noted, which dictates the need to see a doctor.

To treat insomnia in children from one to five years of age, herbal preparations based on herbs (motherwort, lemon balm, mint) are prescribed.

How long should a newborn sleep?

First, let's define what the concept of “newborn” means. According to most classifications, a child is considered a newborn until 30 days of his life, then the baby begins to be called a baby. The second question that requires an answer is how much should a newborn sleep? Again, there are a huge number of theories on this subject, but if we summarize them, we get approximately the following sleep pattern:

• in the first days of life (up to two weeks), the newborn sleeps about 20 - 22 hours a day;
• starting from two weeks and until the end of the first month of life, sleep duration is reduced to 17 hours a day.

It is best if the duration of night sleep is 13–14 hours, and the reduction occurs due to daytime sleep. Believe me, it’s better to play more with your child during the day than to “have fun” with him at night, especially if you have nervous neighbors and a working husband who is tired from the working day and has to go back to work tomorrow. The question of how a newborn should sleep is quite individual. All children are different: there are sleepyheads who can sleep 23 hours a day, and there are those who feel sorry for wasting their time sleeping when there is a lot of interesting things around them. Therefore, first of all, it is worth observing your child and adjusting it to yourself. Children generally have very strong adaptive abilities. And you, one way or another, need to get enough sleep at night.

When do you need a night light?

There are times when it is necessary to leave a night light in a child's room all night. Then you should choose a night light with red or yellow light spectra. The blue spectrum of light in a nursery at night is very harmful. If a sleeping person is systematically exposed to even weak blue light, his immune system will weaken, which will affect the general condition of the body. The concentration of melatonin in the body decreases sharply when exposed to blue light. But if you need to be alert all night, then such a spectrum will just save the situation and prevent drowsiness.

Green light has a lesser effect on the sleep hormone, but such a spectrum often causes daytime sleepiness. When you need to briefly extend your wakefulness, and then plan on getting a good night's sleep, then you should turn on the green light in the bedroom. Experiments have proven that the green spectrum of light can shift the biological clock by 1.5 hours, and the blue spectrum by 3 hours. If the baby cannot sleep in complete darkness, you can leave the night light on until the child falls asleep, and then turn it off.

Experts consider red to be the optimal light for a night light, since it least (compared to other spectra) suppresses the production of melatonin and leaves the circadian rhythm normal.

Comparing green light with red light, the human eye is noted to be more susceptible to the former. With green light, a person distinguishes the colors of surrounding objects, but with red light, everything will merge, only contrast can be distinguished.

Waking up at night in a room with green light, a person will move freely, quickly adapting to the darkness. The retina suffers minimally from poor visibility.

What about daytime naps?

Daytime and nighttime sleep are regulated by different mechanisms, so during the day it doesn’t matter whether the bedroom is lit or not. The problem may be different: can the baby sleep in a bright bedroom? Experts recommend darkening the room while the baby is sleeping, since this step will allow the baby to:

• reduce the level of stimulation;
• create a familiar environment (mood) for sleep.

In the first months of life, babies can sleep anywhere, but after 4-5 months the situation changes radically: the child’s activity increases, and interest in everything around him appears. How can you sleep when the bedroom is lit and you can see so many interesting things: patterns on the wallpaper, toys, you never know what can attract you to take out the crumbs. Therefore, parents should close the curtains and thereby reduce the level of visual stimulation for the child.

There is no need to completely darken the bedroom during daytime sleep. Complete darkness is not a prerequisite for quality daytime rest for a child. One hundred percent darkness is needed when sleeping at night. During the day, the curtains can be closed loosely to let in some sunlight. The very fact of preparing the room is a signal to the baby that he needs to get ready for sleep. Good daytime sleep requires preparation and attitude.

Be sure to make sure that the curtains in the bedroom are light-proof, and also check whether certain elements of the equipment glow at night. Roller blinds, blinds, and blackout curtains are suitable for a child's bedroom.

Do you want your child to have a good sleep? Make his bedroom completely dark at night and comfortable during naps.

Consequences

If parents ignore their child’s fear of the dark and do not take action in time, ordinary childhood fear can become a real pathology. Once formed, nyctophobia will entail a whole tangle of different fears. This can cause nervous and mental disorders in a child, and panic attacks throughout his life.

In addition, childhood fears, hidden deep in a person’s subconscious, will acquire a mass of unpleasant and unhelpful complexes for a normal life. Perhaps the child will not become a sick person, but low self-esteem, fear of change and responsibility are guaranteed.

Age stages of fear

2 years

Children, as a rule, begin to be afraid of the dark at the age of 2, when their imagination is already sufficiently developed and is capable of creating holistic images, including negative ones. But kids at this age cannot yet clearly and in detail tell their parents what is bothering them. Therefore, they may wake up at night, throw tantrums, stubbornly refuse to sleep in their crib and constantly ask to sleep with their parents.

3 years

At the age of 3, when the crisis associated with the first transitional age begins, the boundaries of the world around the child expand. He now knows that there is something else outside the apartment: a playground, a park, a kindergarten... As experience and knowledge accumulate, fears also grow. The child is able to talk about them, draw them at your request. Use this to eliminate the cause of your fear.

Effect of dim light

It is often mistakenly believed that only bright light is harmful to sleep. In fact, at night, even dim, dim light in the bedroom is harmful to health: you need to sleep in complete darkness.

But the room where a person sleeps is rarely completely darkened. A person does not pay attention to dim, dim light, and even moonlight is not a hindrance, because... It’s natural that the moon is shining outside the window. The numbers on the electronic alarm clock may light up - but this is very important, because... It is possible to see what time it is without turning on the lights. Many people cannot sleep if the TV is not on - you just need to turn down the volume, and then it will lull you to sleep.

All this - the TV on, a cozy dim nightlight, a glowing dial - disrupts the production of melatonin. You need to sleep in the dark, because the eye perceives light even through closed eyelids - just like the light of a light bulb behind a lampshade. And this light impulse enters not only the visual center, but also the pineal gland (which is why this gland is also called the third eye). And if you had to turn on the light in the middle of the night, a severe blow was dealt to the production of melatonin, sleep will be severely disrupted, and with it all the subtle processes occurring in the body at night.

Sleeping in the light and oncology

Since the main amount of melatonin is produced at night, we can say that important prevention of tumor diseases occurs during sleep. This hormone affects the functioning of the entire endocrine system and the stability of the immune system.

The thing is that cancer cells are cells in which, for one reason or another, malfunctions have occurred, and they begin to grow at incredible speed, absorbing neighboring, healthy cells to maintain their vital functions.

Failures occur due to DNA damage. There are many reasons for this, but melatonin is an antioxidant and protects our cells from damage and malignant degeneration.

It is especially important for women to sleep in the dark: melatonin slows down the production of the female hormone estrogen, an excess of which can lead to the appearance of malignant neoplasms. Therefore, it is dangerous for the weaker sex to stay awake at night.

Blue and blue light

The peculiarity of the effect of the blue part of the spectrum (and these are waves of 450-480 nm) on human vision is that such waves most significantly affect the production of the hormone melatonin by the pineal gland. Under their influence, a three-hour shift in biorhythms towards the daytime occurs.

Scientists advise avoiding bluish or bluish light in the evening and it is doubly harmful to sleep with the light on if the light is blue or cyan. By the way, greenish light is also not very useful, as it also disrupts biorhythms, although to a lesser extent.

You need to prepare for a good sleep in the evening, so:

• Do not install so-called fluorescent lamps at home.
• Energy-saving light bulbs have a bright blue and cyan glow - try to avoid them at least in the bedroom. But it is better to use incandescent lamps, despite the negative reviews.
• Before going to bed, it is better to turn on table lamps with regular old light bulbs. They create comfort and induce sleep.
• If there are “harmful” lamps in the house that emit a blue glow, glasses with yellow and brown lenses (not plastic instead of glasses) help.
• You can watch TV no later than an hour before bedtime. Sleeping with the TV on is harmful.
• The fewer people are in front of the computer in the evening, the better you will sleep.
• You need to remove everything that glows blue from the bedroom - night light, alarm clock, table lamp, etc.

Even if we fall asleep in dim lighting, this does not mean that we sleep well and that our sleep is healthy. For truly healthy sleep, you need to sleep in complete darkness. What you need to do for this:

• Cover the windows with thick curtains, which must be drawn at night.
• Replace the electronic clock with a regular alarm clock.
• Unlearn falling asleep in front of the TV.

The latter is especially important - and the easiest way to correct this situation. In this case, a person is used to falling asleep not to a “picture” on the screen; he needs a soothing, quiet sound. You need to learn to replace the TV with quiet soothing sounds - there are many ready-made recordings for this: rain, surf, quiet noise of the forest, etc.

And don't forget the good old "grandmother's" methods, such as wearing an eye mask to ensure complete darkness while sleeping. This small thing will be very useful in situations where for some reason it is impossible to sleep in the dark (hospital, airplane, polar summer, etc.)

When to contact specialists?

• If the child is already 10 years old, and he is very scared of a dark room and is afraid to sleep without light. Younger schoolchildren perfectly distinguish between truth and fairy tales. Therefore, stories about fantastic creatures living in the darkness of his room should be a reason to contact a psychologist or psychotherapist.
• If a child’s fear of the dark is associated with loud night tantrums, screams and even fear of death.
• If the fear of the dark is expressed in panic attacks. The child breathes unevenly and loses consciousness.

Watch the video and find out what to do if your child is afraid of the dark.