Do you remember how, as a child, you would fall asleep in just a few minutes?
Head on the pillow and you were asleep in moments. No counting sheep, no tossing and turning, no thinking about tomorrow.
Now it takes you thirty minutes to fall asleep. Or an hour. And you don't know why.
The answer is simpler than you think, but to understand it, you need to know how your brain decides when it's time to sleep.
Your body has its own clock. Something has thrown it off.
The circadian rhythm is an internal biological clock that, over millions of years of evolution, has learned one simple rule: when it's light, you're active. When it's dark, you sleep.
This clock controls when your body produces melatonin, a hormone that induces drowsiness and prepares the body for regeneration. Melatonin begins to be released a few hours before you naturally fall asleep. The brain registers that the sun is setting, the light level drops, and it triggers a whole chain of processes leading to deep sleep.
This mechanism worked perfectly for thousands of years. Until the invention of the screen.
Using your phone before bed does the same thing to your circadian rhythm as midday
The screens of phones, laptops, and televisions emit blue light with a wavelength almost identical to sunlight in the middle of the day. This is precisely the signal that tells your brain: it's not time to sleep yet.
When you look at your phone an hour before bed, your brain blocks melatonin production and shifts your entire sleep cycle by several hours. You fall asleep later, the alarm clock rings at the same time, and you wake up with increasingly shorter and shallower sleep. And you repeat this pattern every evening, because your brain literally doesn't know it's evening.
The phone is just one of the culprits
LED lighting in the living room, a bedside lamp, a TV playing in the background in the bedroom, a charger with a blinking green light all night long. Each of these sources sends a signal to your brain throughout the evening and all night long.
You don't even have to wake up to do yourself harm. Studies show that exposure to even a weak light source during sleep is enough to disrupt melatonin production and shallow the entire sleep cycle.
The brain registers light even through closed eyelids.
Why you fell asleep easier ten years ago
Ten years ago, you might have spent two hours a day in front of a screen. According to DataReportal, globally we now spend almost 7 hours a day in front of screens. Your brain receives the signal that it's daytime all evening, until you close your eyes.
Your circadian rhythm has shifted. Melatonin is released later and later, sleep cycles shorten every night, and mornings become increasingly difficult, even though no one has stolen hours from your night's rest.
What works, especially when you don't want to give up evening habits
Two hours before bed, reduce your exposure to blue light. A filter on your phone, warmer lighting in your apartment, less TV in the bedroom. This works, but it requires discipline, which you often simply don't have after a long day.
There is one solution that works regardless of what you did in the evening: total darkness during sleep. When a sleep mask completely blocks light from all sides, including the forehead and sides, your brain receives an unambiguous signal all night long. Melatonin works without disturbance. Sleep cycles are complete. You wake up rested.
94% of Monté users rated the blackout as complete. You feel the difference from the first night.
Summary
Your brain doesn't sleep worse because you're older. It sleeps worse because it's bombarded with light signals around the clock, which have shifted your natural rhythm. Darkness during sleep is a condition your body had for thousands of years and which it now lacks.
