Nowadays few of us have an experience of total darkness. When people think of darkness they think of fear. To be in the darkness is to be vulnerable and fearful. You can say that it is a natural survival instinct to be wary of dark places. But according to new research, we need to spend some time in utter darkness. In fact, the constant  presence of light in our lives is a cause of fear.

A recent study for Powergen revealed that 98% of parents leave artificial light on overnight. There is light pollution of big cities and small towns.

Many people have a fear of darkness. They don’t think that it is a phobia. They solve the problem by having a night light on. Yet, scientists believe we must spend time in darkness if we want to be healthy. It is good not only for our body but for our mind too. When we are in the dark our bodies begin to produce melatonin. Melatonin stabilizes our biological clock and regulates our circadian rhythms. The point is that people who do have some light at night don’t have the same peaks and troughs of melatonin production as normal adults. Instead, your body behaves like an elderly person’s body.

After a few days of disruption, your whole biological function can be affected. If your hormones are not in phase with your sleep and wake pattern, the consequences can be serious. Melatonin is an antioxidant and helps  protect us against cancer.

Darkness can help our bodies to function normally, protect us against fatal diseases, and can help our minds, too. In northern climates we can see a dramatic rise in depression and suicides not in the dark winter months, but in lighter summer monthly. Fear of the dark often goes hand in hand with other phobias and anxieties. Fear is only future-based emotion. You imagine some negative possibilities. Learning to feel good in the darkness can help to change our thoughts about the world in a positive way. We can have a sense that there is a big bad world outside which is not so bad as we previously thought. Your behaviour affects your thoughts. You can feel more confident, powerful and capable of overcoming a fear.

That is why it is so important to sleep in full darkness. To help this, some light-tight blinds should be put onto windows in order to avoid light pollution in the city at nights and to combat fear of darkness there is a special night light developed, which switches off gradually while you are falling asleep and in the morning works as a natural light alarm clock.