Are Blue Light Blocking Glasses a $3B Scam? [video]
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In the linkedin post where the team unveiled their documentary they quote the involvement of the author of Why We Sleep (great book) and the decades of sleep research, who in their famous book actually did say that blue light impacts melatonin and is crucial for sleep, he even promoted blue light blocking filters. He later retracted that statement and changed his stance.
So were bluelight blocking glasses a scam, or perhaps a product that was informed by a misunderstanding of science. If I read a book based on a renowned sleep scientist who promoted blue light filters and I made glasses to help block blue light, if that understanding of science changed, am I a scammer?
If this is in fact true then this goes against any product or feature that markets reducing blue light such as not to impact sleep. Extending to include Apples marketing of Night Shift.
If you continue to shill the blue-light blocking glasses when it is known that they do not do anything, then yes, you're a scammer.
Unless I am misunderstanding this, this goes against almost every area in which we recommended reducing blue light. Heck Apple market it with their Night Shift function "Studies have shown that exposure to bright blue light in the evening can affect your circadian rhythms and make it harder to fall asleep."
However I agree if you continue to market a product after knowing better than its a scam. But can you also trust the evidence that backtracks science we have considered to be true for so long. You could understand peoples skepticism initially to it being bogus.
This brought people to two conclusions which were proven wrong long ago.
1) the drop in melatonin delays sleep onset, or disrupts sleep
2) wearing blue-light blocking glasses prevents this drop in melatonin.
Bright lights decrease melatonin, the decrease is not large enough to have a significant impact on sleep. Therefore, the blocking of blue-light is unnecessary, and it has never been shown to have an impact on melatonin either.
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/03/24/why-we-sle...
Misconduct is probably overstating it, and he wrote a popular book, which increased awareness of sleep health.
I've always suspected this was mostly nonsense, although not entirely. Even more ridiculous are the blue tinted "gamer glasses", which completely alter the color rendering of the monitor while you are pumping yourself full of adrenaline in video games as you prepare for bed...
I'm imagining gamers spending thousands of dollars on the perfect colour reproducing monitor, only to then change the colour with blue-blockers.
Why would that be so strange? It might be that they want a high performing monitor with high refresh rates and good color production, but don't want the monitors blue light impacting their sleep late at night, so they wear the glasses at night knowing it will reduce the quality of what they see.
Furthermore, yes monitor companies do develop monitors with blue light in mind, for example Asus has a low blue light filter certification on some of its monitors which is independently certified by TUV, of which TUV claims can help reduce sleep disruptions due to blue light. Based on this doco, that claim is also debunked.
A 45 minute video does not interest me.
If you want the summary of how the "scam" works, or why it isn't true
Stage 1) research showed that blue-light in mega-doses impacts melatonin levels
Stage 2) ignore that the drop in melatonin has almost zero impact on sleep
Stage 3) sell blue-light blocking glasses, which block blue-light, which we saw in step 2 has no impact on sleep.
Stage 4) profit.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pedalpete_are-blue-light-bloc...
I think this is somewhat reasonable, since the issue is that the UV comes from, specifically, shitty light sources that are attempting to make blue bits of the spectrum (led and fluorescent).