Orange glasses may help you sleep better

You may have a great night's sleep if you put on orange glasses some hours before going to bed, says a study. Orange glasses have been found to block certain wavelengths of light emitted by electronic screens which hamper our sleep cycle, making it easier for us to sleep. Studies have shown that light from the blue part of the spectrum, inhibits the body's production of melatonin, a hormone that helps people fall asleep.

A Swiss study of 13 teenage boys showed that when the boys donned orange-tinted glasses -- also known as blue blockers and shown to prevent melatonin suppression -- in the evening for a week, they felt "significantly more sleepy" than when they wore clear glasses. The boys looked at their screens for at least a few hours on average before going to bed, and were monitored. The findings were published in The Journal of Adolescent Health.

Older adults may be less affected by blue light, experts said, since the yellowing of the lens and other changes in the ageing eye filter out increasing amounts of blue light.

But blue light remains a problem for most people, and an earlier study of 20 adults ages 18 to 68 found that those who wore amber-tinted glasses for three hours before going to bed improved their sleep quality considerably relative to a control group that wore yellow-tinted lenses, which blocked only ultraviolet light, The New York Times reported.