Artificial Outdoor Lighting Increases Risk of Insomnia in Older Adults Resulting in Chronic Disease

Publish Date : 2018-12-03

Scientist from Seoul, South Korea found that getting exposed to artificial lights outdoors in the night time can increase the risk of insomnia in the older generation. The study was held recently on a group of population to understand the effects of outdoors light on various age groups and it proved to have increased the daily dosage and hypnotic prescriptions among the older generation. An associate professor in the National University of Seoul situated in South Korea, Kyoung-bok stated that the study proved that that artificial lights have negative impacts on the older adults, increases insomnia and also the increased the daily dosage of sleeping medicines.

Insomnia is a disorder that can cause trouble in falling asleep, waking up early and even maintaining proper sleeping hours; the disorder is caused by extreme temperature conditions, extreme levels of noises and the new factor the intensive outdoors lights. The new form of population related to light known as light pollution is also dangerous for human health. Light pollution can cause chronic diseases like diabetes, depression, obesity as well as cancer.

The study was held on 52,027 adults belonging from the age group of 60 and older from which more than half of the group were females. The level of light each participant was exposed to was measured with the help satellites and the data from health insurance records were studied to understand the effects. While the results clearly explained that lights can be hazardous and increase the consumption of hypnotic drugs like triazolam and zolpidem by almost 22 percent.