By NOEL MURPHY
READING mobile phones or iPads before going to sleep could be damaging your health much more than just keeping you up late at night.
Geelong neuroscientist Sarah Loughran says the devices’ blue light could be damaging the body’s circadian rhythms and melatonin levels, posing more serious possibilities.
Dr Loughran, a researcher with the University of Wollongong’s Australian Centre for Electromagnetic Bioeffects Research, told the Independent sleep deprivation could be linked to all manner of problems.
Her comments follow recent overseas findings linking late-night mobile use and sleep deficiency to diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease. Scientists at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, US, suggested chronic melatonin suppression was linked to increased risk of certain cancers.
Studies Dr Loughran is undertaking at the Australian Centre for Electromagnetic Bioeffects Research, which is a recently formed NH&MRC Centre of Research Excellence, are looking into the effects of mobile phones on sleep patterns.
“In general, it can hamper your sleep just by leaving less available time for sleep because you’re playing games, etc,” she said.
“Exciting or provocative sites or games are boosting adrenalin and hampering sleep time. Then the blue light from these devices can interrupt circadian rhythms and levels of melatonin, an important hormone for regulating the sleep-wake cycle.
“Pyschological health and well-being can be affected, anything that’s causing sleep deprivation will impact on health, on learning ability, work performance, psychological mood and more.”
“Effects on brain activity are there and have been shown several times — both my own work and by others — and I am currently looking at potential mechanisms behind these effects, as well as if similar effects exist in children.
“It has been suggested that children may be more sensitive to the electromagnetic fields emitted by devices like mobile phones, and I am about to conduct the world’s first sleep study investigating this possibility in children and adolescents.”
Dr Loughran has previously raised concerns that the friendly buzz of mobile phones in Aussie blokes’ pockets might be damaging their sperm.
She said too many questions had been raised about the effect of mobiles on sperm shape and movement for the matter to be ignored. Likewise on changes recorded in brain activity.
“The brain shows small changes to fast bursts of activity known as spindles that you don’t have when you’re awake,’’ Dr Loughran said of research in which participants had phones placed over the right temporal region.
The questions are just what this activity might mean, whether it affects sleep or other biological functions and whether more far-reaching effects might be linked to mobile phones.
Dr Loughran said widespread concerns had been raised about cancer links to phones but reproductive functions were also a concern because of their sensitivity to heat and the heat generated by mobile phones.
Phones might affect sperm motility, the ability of sperm cells to move forward, she said. They might also affect sperm morphology, the shape of sperm cells.
“Everything that radiates has the possibility of heating,’’ Dr Loughran said.
