Your n of 1 argument is the equivalent of “my grandpa smoked until he was 95 so smoking clearly can’t be bad for your health”.

And no, reducing brightness on monitors doesn't have the same effect. I recently upgraded my monitors to 600nits brightness from 350nits and there has been no change in comfort level with redshift but without the redshift, the old monitors (and the new) stil feel very hostile to eyes.

More importantly, as an individual, the only thing that counts is when the n of 1 is you. As another commenter said, you don't need to live your life by studies. It's not like there is much expense or risk in trying a screen reddener, so try it out, and if it works for you, great - it's bizarre that the author thinks it is "aggravating" that a lot of people use things that they say work for them.

Regardless the maximum possible effect will be constrained by the biology of the cells responsible for responding to blue light. Maybe knowledge of the biology is incomplete or flawed but to not use it to inform what’s possible seems foolish.

So what if it’s a placebo effect? Well some people are spending money and time investing in blue light filtering glasses and other solutions. It’s potentially snake oil and it could keep them from pursuing better solutions that would actually help them sleep

> Well some people are spending money and time investing in blue light filtering glasses and other solutions.

Ironically, we actually do have a number of good studies on the effects of blue light filtering glasses (easily findable with a Google search) and they do demonstrably reduce onset of sleep time. Where more research is needed is on software-only filters for screens.

Just the latter on its own is quite thoroughly proven to help people sleep, and helps with migraines, and so on.

Or what about UV light? I've never seen anyone say that an anti-UV coating/lens material in glasses helps with sleep (nor that it doesn't). But UV is still high frequency light that enters our eyes, even higher frequency than blue light, and there's at least some research to suggest it might affect human circadian rhythms despite its invisibility to us. But I've never seen anyone suggest that wearing your regular glasses (because most regular glasses these days are UV-blocking) before bed, or before a nap during the day (or before trying to sleep through the day, for a night shift worker), could help someone get to sleep.

I'd imagine it could also depend on exactly how much blue light is filtered; it's not like all blue light filtering glasses are tinted to the same degree. Glasses that all but make the world look like a reptile house might do a lot more than glasses that have only the faintest of orange tints. It's not like lenses either block blue light fully or don't block it at all; there's a spectrum here. How much blue light is supposed to get blocked for it to matter?

Were the studies that showed blue light blocking glasses to improve sleep done with lenses so tinted they were essentially sunglasses, or did they use nearly clear/only slightly tinted lenses akin to the blue light blocking lenses that are marketed as alternatives to regular clear lenses?

Put another way, placebo or not, if there's an effect, and it's a positive one for you, it really doesn't matter. It's working.

The problem is, how do you define "if there's an effect"? A placebo can not have an effect, yet, it has.

I've used a number of blue light filters, and I've never paid for them.

I guess that it may help people with undercorrected myopia due to the chromatic aberration, but, I don't know.

Works for me, both reducing the blue light and worked for my baby, too, using only deep orange and red light of a cheap LED color change lamp. Apparently works for many, since red nursing lights are suddenly sold everywhere.

All of humanity has been a witness to these observations and yet we blindly assume blue light filters must have such and such an effect.

But even if it did: suppose a modern concrete-cave-dweller has an out of phase shifted day/night pattern with respect to solar rhythm, having blue light as the last form of light actually seems more natural!