Your Lights are Wrecking your Sleep (Here’s What I Use)
And: My journey to Health on Easy Mode
When friends come over for dinner, they think we’ve joined a cult.
This is what our house looks like after sunset.
And it’s how I increased my deep sleep by ~40% (~2 hrs) for under $20.
It looks ridiculous. But this one change has been the single biggest lever for my sleep.
I fall asleep faster, sleep deeper, and wake up earlier.
The change: after sunset, we only use red incandescent bulbs instead of normal LEDs.
It cost under $20 and has already given me hundreds of hours of better sleep.
You might think: “How can one change have such an impact? This sounds like a gimmick.”
The right change has trickle‑down effects. The red lights help me:
Eat smaller dinners.
Be in bed by 9:30pm.
Fall asleep within ~10 minutes.
No more 3am wake-ups to pee.
Wake up at dawn or with sunrise.
Sleep advice typically focuses on routines, alcohol, meal timing, and exercise. Very few people talk about how indoor light quietly sabotages all of those.
For me, better sleep started with changing my night lights.
How Your Indoor Lights Quietly Wreck Your Sleep
Most homes are lit with bright, cool‑white LED bulbs. LED bulbs are:
Blue‑heavy, red/infrared‑poor: Blue light signals daytime alertness to the brain and suppresses melatonin, the hormone that helps you wind down.1
Linked to overeating at night: Evening blue‑rich light has been associated with later eating, higher calorie intake, and altered metabolism.23
Mismatched to nature: As the sun sets, natural light shifts from blue to infrared. Our indoor LEDs at night do the opposite: bright and blue right when your brain expects the opposite.
Flickery: Many LEDs have invisible flicker that can trigger headaches or strain for people.
Why I Use Red Incandescent Bulbs After Dark Instead of Normal LEDs
No night alert signal: Red bulbs emit no blue light, so they don’t send the same “be alert” signal at night.
No night-time cravings: Less blue light = less evening snacking and a stronger melatonin signal.4
Better glucose regulation: Red/infrared light has beneficial effects on mitochondria and glucose regulation. LED bulbs lack near-infrared light compared to incandescent bulbs. (See my podcast with Glen Jeffery for using red lights to lower glucose).
No eye strain: Incandescent bulbs emit a smooth, continuous glow similar to firelight. In contrast, LEDs produce a sharp “spike” of light that creates noise to the brain and eye strain.
Practically, this looks like: no LED lighting after sunset → a few red lamps on → phone in red light mode → bedroom as dark as possible.
Fixing night lights was just the start of cleaning up my environment.
My Journey to Health on Easy Mode: Parsing the snake-oil in longevity
My longevity protocol was a second job: supplements, calorie counting, gym grinding, willpower.
So I was shocked when a simple $20 change to my night lights achieved what years of traditional sleep advice couldn’t.
Once I fixed light, it was hard to ignore everything else in my environment: air, water, plastics, EMF.
Health on Easy Mode is a curated collection of the exact products I use to change my environment so health becomes “automatic.”
100+ exact products I use at home (and why).
15+ categories (light, water, air, emf, haircare, skincare, diagnostics).
PFAS‑screened, plastic-free, non-toxic vetted picks.
Inclusion is 100% merit‑based. Brands don’t pay to place.
Health on Easy Mode thrived in my ultimate stress test: Life after my daughter was born.
My rigorous longevity protocol wasn’t an option, so I went all-in on “Easy Mode.” The result? Effortlessly lost the baby weight, better sleep, higher energy than before, and elevated mood.
This journey led me to two big realizations:
Controlling your environment makes health the default. No willpower required.
You can’t out-supplement a bad environment. Environment over effort.
The goal is simple: Less hype. Less junk. More health.
Copy My Sleep Setup (what I actually use at home)
My Sleep Setup: The red bulbs, blue-light blockers, mattress, and blackout curtains I use.
Browse all categories: Explore the full Health on Easy Mode collection.
If you start anywhere, start with light. Swap a few bulbs and see what happens to your sleep. Drop a comment if you try it!
I’m Aastha, and thanks for reading Live Longer World. I write about my Health on Easy Mode protocols and interview scientists at the frontiers of longevity. The goal is to parse through the snake-oil in longevity.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1418490112
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6563591/
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0155601
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article-abstract/90/5/2755/2836826?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false
This is sooo helpful and I am going to implement this ASAP! Thank you for sharing!
Interesting!! Such a well-explained and thoughtful piece. Thanks for posting.