Everything You Need To Know About Blue Light Filters

Is a blue light filter for pc necessary? The evidence just keeps on piling up – excessive exposure to blue light is harmful. Blue light suppresses the production of melatonin, a sleep-promoting hormone produced by the brain’s pineal gland.

While this is a welcome effect during the day, blue light at night suppresses sleep and disruption to the sleep cycle. Furthermore, this lack of sleep can also cause other far-reaching effects on your general well-being. Blue light is also associated with eye strain and permanent damage to the eyes which may contribute to the Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD). Blue light has the highest amount of energy and is able to penetrate into the eye and cause severe damage.

To safeguard our health and protect our eyes, we have to find ways of reducing our exposure to blue light. Blue light filters offer a way of doing just that. So, what is a blue light filter? They are filters that provide protection from the effects of blue light by blocking most if not all the light. Blue light filters fulfil this basic function even if they come in many forms or work in different ways.

What Are The Types of Blue Light Filters

1. Natural Blue Light Filter

It may interest you to know that our eyes contain a natural blue light filter. This natural filter is the macular pigment. It’s a yellow spot found in the central layer of the retina in the eyes. This protects the macula of the eye which is where light is focused and the image is the sharpest. The macula is the most photosensitive region of the eye which makes it prone to the damage done by blue light. Hence the need for a blue light filter in the first place.

True to form, macula pigment absorbs light virtually only in the blue light spectrum, preventing it from reaching sensitive photoreceptors.

However, the macular pigment density and its ability to filter blue light vary from person to person. This is why some people are more sensitive to light than others. Fortunately, the amount of macular pigment isn’t necessarily set in stone. You can increase the quantity of macular pigment in your eyes by consuming a diet rich in green leafy vegetables. You could also turn to supplements of the carotenoids which make up macular pigment – lutein, zeaxanthin, and meso-zeaxanthin.

Many of us have a thin macular pigment and even this isn’t enough to erase the effect of blue light.

2. Physical Blue Light Filters

This category of blue light filters includes screen protectors such as laptops, phones, TVs and other devices. There are also blue-blocking glasses that you can wear to protect you from sources of blue light. How much blue light is filtered by physical blue light filters depends on its tint colour. The presence of a blue-blocking coating or other materials within the filter.

The most common blue light filtering tints are yellow, amber and red. As a rule of thumb, yellow filters block the least amount of blue light but provide the least colour distortion. On the other hand, red filters block all light except. This means that blue light is blocked entirely since it’s farther away from red than yellow in the colour spectrum. As a drawback, red filters have low visual transmission and more colour distortion. Amber or orange filters usually fall somewhere in-between red and yellow filters. Look at our selection of screen protectors and blue-blocking glasses at Ocushield for blue light filters you can depend on.

3. Software Blue Light Filters

This type of blue light filters come in the form of programs that you can install on your phones and computers to reduce the emission of blue light. They reduce this emission by altering the colors displayed by the digital screen of your device. For laptops, there are countless apps like f.lux and NightShift that are sufficient to keep your eyes safe. There are also apps suited for smartphones like Twilight which also reduce the amount of blue light emitted from the screen. However, unlike physical blue light filters, the blue light reduction by software can’t be 100% due to limitations by hardware.

Conclusion

If you were wondering what a blue light filter is, then you have your answer. Blue light filters in all their various forms play a major role in the protection of our eyesight from blue light. So all you have to do is pick a filter that’s convenient for you. If you’re interested in finding out more about blue light filters, you can read various articles on our blog.