Right before we go to sleep, most of us wash our face and brush our teeth.
But an expert says that you could be wrecking your chance for a good night's rest by flipping on those bathroom lights before undertaking those two routines.
Russell Foster, an Oxford neuroscientist, says that bright fluorescent bathroom light wakes the body up just as it's trying to go into sleep mode. Turning those lights off keeps things regulated.
"Often people will turn their lights down at night which helps to get the body ready for sleep, but then they will go and brush their teeth and turn their bathroom light on," he said during a lecture on sleep at The Royal Society in London, reported The Telegraph.
"That is very disrupting. I often think someone should invent a bathroom mirror light which has a different setting for nighttime," he added.
Light has an influence over all of our circadian rhythms; a US study in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine recently noted that sitting too far from a window at work can reduce your sleep by up to 46 minutes.
"We have this master clock ticking on the brain and each individual cells have their own little clock, so it’s rather like the conductor of an orchestra producing a signal which the rest of the body takes a cue from." said Foster. "There is a beautiful symphony of rhythms," said Foster.
So as you out, out those darn spots on your teeth, make sure those lights stay off, off!