My fella gets up about 2 - 3 am, and leaves the bedroom to lay on the couch and watch TV until he falls asleep again. I wear very very good earplugs and don’t hear a thing. But if one of the cats bumps the bedroom door open, I’ll be damned if, although I am asleep, the almost imperceptible flickering of the TV, which is around the corner from the bedroom and not at all visible from the bedroom, doesn’t wake me up.
He says I’m nuts. And I don’t want to lock the cats out, so do I just have thin eyelids??
Maybe you don’t close your eyelids all the way. My son used to do that when he was tiny - NOT an attribute you want in your sub-one-year-old, I can tell you.
This article claims some ridiculous proportion of people sleep with their eyes fully open. Not sure I trust any statistic with an “up to” tacked in front of it…
I find it very strange that some people can’t perceive light transmitted through their eyelids. It’s just a fairly thin layer of skin - bright light can easily shine right through it - and ‘bright’ is relative - once your eyes are shut, they will adjust to be more sensitive to light.
Could it be the cat moving the door that’s waking you up? Considering that we’re biologically programmed to tune out stuff we know is not a threat, but be alert to things that may be a threat, it’s possible that your body senses movement in the room and wakes itself up to make sure that the movement is, indeed, simply your pet and not an intruder/fire/natural disaster.
Could also be a sound; I remember that I used to be able to hear tube TV sets when they were on vs. off- it was a sort of super-high pitched sound that seemed to be at the very edge of what I could hear. I don’t know if I still can; I’m older, and tube TVs aren’t around anymore either.
Or maybe there’s just enough of a sound change to trigger your lizard brain into knowing something’s different.
I don’t think it’s a matter of eyelid thickness. TV screens are much, much brighter than they used to be. If you’re not in a deep sleep, it’s very possible even the reflected light from a TV screen could wake you, especially because it flickers and is not a steady light. Have you tried revering roles, with your guy lying in the dark bedroom with eyes closed and door open while you turn on the TV?
60 Hz cathode ray tubes can produce a sound at 15750 Hz which is near the upper end of normal human hearing. I used to be able to hear it but no longer can. But it seems unlikely that the OP is still using a CRT TV.
Oh, I know. I just meant that it could be a sound that isn’t something she’s normally consciously perceiving.
My cat bumps my door open every night, which allows light from down the hall to penetrate. It wakes me up. I slog over to the door, shut it as far as I can, and go back to sleep. Later, the cat leaves and/or comes back again. Rinse and repeat.
You guys don’t shave your eyelids down? You’d look so youthful!
I don’t think it’s thin eyelids, but just normal ones. Most any light will disturb my sleeping. Perhaps adding a cat door to your bedroom will help.
We block the bedroom door with a cat scratcher on the inside so it only opens to cat-width. We keep it from closing with a foam bumper we got at IKEA.
People can have a thin anything. It’s the way people work.
I’m curious- I easily see light through my eyelids. However, I’m a white guy with low melanin levels. I wonder if people with darker skin see as much or any light through their eyelids.
The light of a child’s torch will pass through your hand; of course light will pass through your eyelids. You don’t need to have thin eyelids or pale skin or whatever; this is true for everyone. That’s why you wake up when somebody turns a light on.
The function of your eyelids is not to make things dark; it’s to mosten your eyes (by spreading secretions across the surface), clean them and protect them from dust and foreign matter. The fact that it reduces the amount and definition of light coming into the eye is a by-product.