Why not play with your phone as soon as you open your eyes?

You may have heard many people say

“Don’t use your phone before bedtime”

But I also want to tell you that

Don’t start playing with your phone as soon as you open your eyes!

The intensity is so high early in the morning that my eyes can't stand it

Playing with your phone at any time is an "extreme sport" for your eyes. Playing with your phone when you wake up in the morning is even worse. Mobile phones are small, and when you use them while lying in bed, the distance between the phone and your eyes is often lower than the comfortable reading distance (40cm). Therefore, the eyes need to constantly adjust and focus, which causes tension in the ciliary muscles.

Staring at the phone screen without blinking will reduce the number of times you blink, which can also cause dry eyes. Moreover, the indoor light is dim in the morning, and the strong contrast between the phone screen and the environment aggravates eye fatigue. Even if the "dark mode" is turned on, the screen brightness may still not be suitable for the eyes, and many people are even too lazy to adjust the brightness.

What's worse is that our eyes are relatively dry because our tear secretion decreases when we sleep. Playing with your phone when you are awake and should be "replenishing water" for your eyes is clearly "killing your eyes with thirst". After all this, you may feel dry, astringent, and burning in your eyes. Before you even start your day's work, your eyes are already exhausted.

The confused mind needs the morning sunshine to wake up

When we first wake up in the morning, we sometimes feel groggy, which may be because we are still in "sleep inertia". Compared with the awake state before going to bed, the brain will have more Delta waves (related to sleep) and fewer Beta waves (related to wakefulness) when it is drowsy. And for up to half an hour after waking up, the blood flow rate in the brain will also be lower than the level before going to bed.

All of this shows that opening your eyes is not the real "waking up". We still need to give ourselves some more time to reach "full charge".

During this period of time when we haven't gotten rid of "sleep inertia", we not only react a little slower, our thinking ability declines, but our mood is also "not quite right". In fact, there is a way to help us "restart" faster and get into a state of full energy, but this also requires us to have the determination not to touch the phone first - that is to get out of bed and let the morning sun act as our "starter".

In fact, light can "calibrate" our biological clock and is an excellent "regulator" of circadian rhythm. When strong light (such as sunlight) enters our eyes, the body will receive a "time to wake up" signal and suppress the secretion of melatonin, which induces sleep. This not only helps us get rid of sleepiness faster, but also helps us secrete melatonin at night. In the long run, it can also help us go to bed early and get up early.

It is better to be able to bask in the sun for 1-2 hours outdoors, but if you don't have so much "disposable time", it is also good to spend 10-15 minutes in the morning to feel the sun. The benefits of letting the sun wake up the brain are not only reflected in the moment when you just get up. One study found that people who received bright morning light for 5 consecutive days scored 79% higher in cognitive tests than the control group.

A study showed that even if people had enough sleep the night before, using their mobile phones for 45 minutes would increase their mental fatigue and sleepiness, and their cognitive function would decline. The researchers also found through experiments that even using a mobile phone for only 5 minutes was enough to affect the performance of healthy participants in a word memory task, indicating that their working memory ability was impaired.

Playing with your phone may also increase the concentration of cortisol in your body, a hormone that has a "refreshing" effect. But if the concentration is too high, it may also interfere with the prefrontal cortex of the brain, and our decision-making ability will also decline, making it more difficult to make rational choices. If you find that your brain is not working well all day, it may be related to playing with your phone for too long when you get up.

Having said that, if we don’t play with our phones when we wake up, how else can we live?

Put down your phone, get out of bed, let the morning sun illuminate your eyes, let the energy fill every cell, gradually walk out of last night's dream, and embrace today's world. Without mobile phones, we return to "life", reading life, cleaning life, and time becomes more like time.