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If someone told me that I should start brushing my teeth in the dark, I’d probably think they were trying to play a prank on me to watch me stumble around my bathroom.
But according to Russell Foster, a professor of circadian neuroscience at Oxford University, said that brushing your teeth in the dark could actually help you fall asleep.
This is because when you go into your bathroom right before bed and turn that bright florescent light in your bathroom on, you’re disrupting the shutting down pattern that your body was just getting into.
This is because your circadian rhythm is controlled by light levels. Your body knows how to sleep due to lots of environmental factors, but the light level is one of the most important ones.
“We have this master clock ticking on the brain and each individual cells have their own little clock, so it’s rather like the conductor of an orchestra producing a signal which the rest of the body takes a cue from.”
But sleeping patterns are even more difficult in the winter. You sit in a dim office that’s artificially lit, which confuses your body into thinking it’s earlier than it is. Then you walk outside, and it’s dark. Then you go home, and turn on a bunch of lights again.
So turning off the lights in the minutes that you’re preparing for bed may actually help your body transition better into sleeping. Brushing your teeth with the lights off is something you can get used to, and it’s a small price to pay for a much better night’s sleep.
