Question: I have heard that mobile phones and using them straight before you go to sleep can actually alter the quality of your sleep. I use my phone before bed pretty much every night so I wanted to know if it's true that it's affecting me and can actually disturb my sleeping patterns or some such thing? Oh, and if it does, what is it that causes the problem?

Hi………. good question.
Yes there is some evidence that mobile phones may do that. To go to sleep all our body systems need to go slowly, including our brain waves. When we first go to sleep we go gradually into deep sleep and our brain waves slow. It seems that mobile phone technology doesn’t let the brain waves slow so much. This is pretty much the same as staring at a screen, which seems to also stop the brain waves from slowing.
Of course when you are on the mobile phone, you are probably chatting to friends so you are also likely to be alert and having a good time. But when you prepare your body (and brain !) for sleep , you really need to be calm.
So for those two reasons , it is really better for your sleep to stop using mobile phones and other screen based rechnology a while before you got to bed.