Screentime Side Effects: 4 Ways to Manage Hormonal Health Through Daily Screentime

Spending too much time staring at screens, be it computers or phones, can wreak havoc on your hormones.

How much is too much screen time? Since the COVID pandemic, screen time has increased dramatically at all age levels. With the new concept of working from home and the transition of the world to the online realm, screen work has increased exponentially. However, there are many ways that blue light from screens affects us. It’s bad for your eyes, physical health, mental health, skin, and hormonal health.

Yes, hormonal health is also affected by screen time. And therefore spending too much time staring at screens, be it computers or phones, can wreak havoc on your hormones.

3 Ways Screen Time Affects Hormones

1. Blocking the production of melatonin – Prolonged exposure to screens, even passive viewing, causes sleep disturbances and therefore affects the levels of the hormone melatonin, which regulates sleep and plays an important role in strengthening the immune system. Sleep deprivation, therefore, damages the immune system and can be considered an indirect cause that increases the risk of cancer and other diseases.

2. Release stress hormones – Lights and screen stimuli stress our anatomy, and screen time causes repeated stress on the Central Nervous System. As a result, we can become angry, impulsive, withdrawn, aggressive, and less empathetic.

3.Changes in appetite regulating hormones (leptin and ghrelin) : With high screen time negatively affecting our ability to fall asleep. Additionally, sleep deprivation has been shown to downregulate leptin (our “satiety hormone”) and increase ghrelin (our “hunger hormone”), which overall increases hunger and food intake. , which leads to weight gain and other health problems.