# Lights on while sleeping, affecting cycle?



## saritasmile (Sep 5, 2004)

Has anyone heard of this? We just moved into a new house that has a gas stove w/ a fake flame. It lights up our room a few times while we are sleeping. My last cycle was 35 days, a big jump from regular 28 days. Looks like this month will be the same. Just trying to figure it out.

I think I may have heard about this but I sometimes accidentally make things up so just making sure.


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## saritasmile (Sep 5, 2004)

well a quick google search confirmed that night light affects ones menstral cycle. But now I don't know what to do. The stove is the only heat and I don't know if I can deal w/ it being freezing. It's been pretty cold here. hmmm...


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## woodstar (Sep 17, 2005)

Hey! I have heard of this, too. Supposedly, you are supposed to sleep in complete darkness to regulate your cycle (if you think light is affecting it). That is much easier said than done, right? The moon should help regulate your cycle by its phases...causing you to ovulate around the full moon. My cycle is also around 35 days or more and there is a bright street lamp right outside my window....I was wondering if that may have something to do with it. It seems like my cycles were never 'irregular' until we moved into this house a couple of years ago. There is a cool thread about lunar conception...you should check it out. It kind of goes along with the whole 'night light' theory!


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## Starflower (Sep 25, 2004)

Just thought I'd chime in here on a night-light related issue. I had read somewhere once that sleeping with the lights on was supposed to increase fertility. I thought that was pretty weird.

My DH and I had trouble conceiving for some time and then I found a tiny little link from a newsletter to a blurb about melatonin affecting the menstrual cycle. Melatonin helps regulate the sleep cycle. When it's dark, people's bodies produce melatonin and it makes them sleepy. Well, I've always been a chronic insomniac and had been taking melatonin tablets to help me sleep.

Long story short, we had been charting and everything before with no success, but I conceived DD the cycle I stopped using the melatonin. So I definitely think there is a connection, but I don't know how a night light would effect cycle length. Might be interesting to research.









Stress from moving to a new environment could also affect your cycle. Mine tends to go long when I have been stressed out.


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## saritasmile (Sep 5, 2004)

Quote:


Originally Posted by *Starflower*

Stress from moving to a new environment could also affect your cycle. Mine tends to go long when I have been stressed out.

I had wondered if it was from stress but I personally get a shorter cycle when stressed... it's actually how I got preg w/ ds. I've just never had it affect 2 cycles.

Well last night we cranked up the heat before bed and then turned it off for the night. Turns out that's not the only light, the neighbors 2 doors down have a floodlight that comes into our window.







: bugged me all night. so up w/ the blankets on windows. I know I just sleep better in real dark.

woodstar- you should try some blankets too. I am so attatched to the 28 day cycle and regularity, I'm going crazy after 2 months!


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## vermontana (Oct 21, 2005)

Lunaception by Louise Lacey addresses the effects moonlight, and other light, have on our cycles. Her book may be out of print now, though. Another great book that talks about night light, and fertility in general, is Garden of Fertility by Katie Singer.


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## shanagirl (Oct 24, 2005)

"Lights Out" is a great book that talks extensively about how light affects our hormones and how critical sleep is to our immune system and all the restorative functions of our organs and cells, every night (as I type here at 10:40 pm when I should be in bed...) Anyway, the "Bucky" products makes a wonderful sleep mask that completely blocks light, and it's very comfortable on the face, with a little padding at the bottom so you don't feel any weight over your eyes.

Here's a bit from the book:

"Early sleep is usually REM sleep...drifting into even deeper NREM sleep as your melatonin surges shifts your brain activity to immune maintenance.

All reproductive activity is slowed at night. That means a better chance for pregnancy would be offered by daytime mating. At night, sex steroid hormones take a backseat to increased prolactin production from the pituitary. Both prolactin and melatonin are powerful players in reproduction, too, due to the simple fact the melatonin controls the production of estrogen and testosterone and prolactin makes milk. Melatonin and progesterone are both master-switch hormonal controllers...Because of melatoniin, any increase or decrease in dark time triggers physiologic and behavioral changes via sex hormones in many species, like changes in molting, breeding, and migration. Seasonal distribution of conception and birth rates in humans supports the theory that the function of melatonin is to regulate the time of readiness for reproduction. Readiness for reproduction, in turn, determines the amount and timing of progesterone release in women and dihydrotestoterone secretion in men."


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