Having a routine before you go to bed and in the morning can help reduce stress and improve sleep quality. But there’s one habit in many people’s routines they should look to quit now.
Naturopathic doctor Dr Janine Bowring posted the warning on her TikTok channel. She said it’s something we all do, we check our phone.
She explained: “You don’t want to do this, this is going to raise your dopamine levels which is very overstimulating to your brain and your nervous system.”
Not only that, looking at things on your phone first thing can also impact your voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCC).
Dr Bowring continued: “The electric and magnetic fields (EMFs) from your cell phone are going to cause too much calcium to flood into your cells via VGCC requiring more magnesium to counter that balance of that calcium flooding in.
“This is going to affect your metabolism for the day, your energy levels, and you could be getting headaches from those EMFs.”
Dr Bowring also warned of the danger of blue light for our health.
She said: “That blue light from your phone is also telling your brain that it’s 12 noon, messing up your circadian rhythms as well.”
Jay Rai, an empowerment psychologist specialising in the neuroscience of mental health, also echoed Dr Bowring’s cry to stop checking your phone in the morning.
Writing for Forbes, she said: “When you first wake up in the morning your brain switches from delta waves, which occur in a deep sleep state, to theta waves, which occur during a sort of daydreamy state.
“The brain then moves to produce alpha waves when you are awake but are relaxed and not processing much information.
“Now, by grabbing your phone first thing and immediately diving into the online world, you force your body to skip the important theta and alpha stages and go straight from the delta stage to being wide awake and alert (also known as the beta state).
“Scientific American reports that ‘the ideation that can take place during the theta state is often free flow and occurs without censorship or guilt’. This makes theta state an ideal time to tap into your subconscious mind to visualise what you want and help your brain drive your actions forward toward achieving your vision.
“In skipping these states and checking your phone right after waking up you are priming your brain for distraction. Seeing or reading something negative first thing in the morning can trigger your stress response and put you on edge for the rest of the day. Similarly, if you see unanswered work emails, you may feel compelled to respond even while you’re still lying in bed. That’s a problem because, as Julie Morgenstern, author of the book Never Check Email In the Morning, puts it, ‘Those requests and those interruptions and those unexpected surprises and those reminders and problems are endless … there is very little that cannot wait a minimum of 59 minutes’.”
