You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.
Hey, everybody.
It's Marielle.
You guys,
I've been trying so hard to make my bedroom pitch black when I sleep that I am fighting an uphill battle.
I have blackout shades and curtains over them,
but the street light on my block shines directly into my window and the light somehow sneaks around the edges of the barriers I've created.
Also, light gets in through my living room windows and then creeps under my bedroom door.
Yeah, okay, I'm being a little over the top here,
but once my eyes adjust at night, it's not actually that dark in my room.
A lot of us are in this situation.
In modern society, we are bombarded with light in the evenings,
and there's research showing this can end up having big consequences for our overall health.
I talked with NPR Health correspondent Will Stone last December when these findings first came out.
We'll have that conversation after the break.
All right, well, so tell us more.
What about this research grabbed your attention?
This research was a pretty massive undertaking.
The researchers recruited about 90,000 people in the UK,
and they had them wear activity devices on their wrists.