Helpful Hints from joeeze: Reading with red headlamp puts insomniacs to sleep

Wrote LifeProTrips on Reddit:

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I have been a bit of an insomniac all my life. I can never sleep before I'm exhausted, and that's almost never before 2 a.m. (I thought it would change as I grew older, but by my mid-30s it hasn't yet).

The problem is that I just can't turn my brain off, I can't sleep. I can try to lay quietly in the dark for hours, but my brain keeps whirling, whirling, whirling away. I'll even try consciously not to think consciously. You can imaging how well that works. It's futile, so I have to get up and do something else.

However, I've discovered a trick that just about always works to put me to sleep. The key is that you're not really trying to shut your brain down, you're engaging it, while the sneaky science elves fight a rear-guard action to put you to sleep.

Read a book in bed with a RED LED headlamp

Only a book though — not Reddit or Facebook, etc. Any paper-based book, Kindle, or e-reader without a backlight will work, but never use a phone or computer: these shine bright bluish-white LED light in your face no matter what color is on the screen. Blue light is stimulating to the brain and will keep you awake: avoid at all costs! A computer screen, a white (aka blue) LED head-lamp, or even an incandescent bulb (too much of the blue spectrum) won't work.

Before I picked up a cheapo red headlamp I would use a white one and it just didn't work. I'd be up all night reading, especially if the book was captivating. Go for the red, read for a bit, you'll be shocked at how little you can read before the book hits you in the face. When you read with a red head-lamp, your brain is snuggled down and sedated. It's better than Nyquil.

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Red headlamp pictured above: $12.67.

[via Anjan Gewali]