Senior study author Doctor Phyllis Zee, chief of sleep medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in America, said: “These findings are important, particularly for those living in modern societies where exposure to indoor and outdoor night-time light is increasingly widespread.
“The results from this study demonstrate that just a single night of exposure to moderate room lighting during sleep can impair glucose and cardiovascular regulation, which are risk factors for heart disease, diabetes and metabolic syndrome.”
Doctor Daniela Grimaldi, a co-first author and research assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern, added: “We showed your heart rate increases when you sleep in a moderately lit room.
“Even though you are asleep, your autonomic nervous system is activated. That’s bad.