Let There Be (Lots of) Light! Part 1
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Summary:
What is sunlight and why it’s so important for your daily/seasonal life.
Getting sunlight in the right amounts can lay the foundation for optimal health in many areas of your life, to include your intelligence and libido.
Allow your eyes and body to receive the appropriate amounts of sunshine via Circadian rhythms and Infradian rhythms for optimal health, regardless of where you may live.
For today’s discussion, the focus will be on what is sunlight, why your light environment is so important to your health, and what steps you can implement immediately (for free-ish) that will make a yuuuge difference in your health. There have been a lot of great scientific research and papers written about these processes, so I’ll stay high level to keep things succinct and not repeat what a bunch of smart people have already discussed. But if you want to take a deep dive into the scientific literature, there’s a plethora of studies to refer to if you check out places like PubMed and Examine.com, and also all of Dr. Jack Kruse’s work. Ready to dive in? Ok let’s get after it!
Increasing sunlight exposure and managing your light environment are foundational to long-term health. I know that’s a bold statement and may go against some long-held beliefs on what helps to create healthy people, but we’re looking to optimize not just survive, right? When I make this statement about sunlight being the foundation to health, I usually get a question like: “Why wouldn’t exercise or food be the foundation to long-term health?” Weeell sure, they are important too, but I’d probably put them in the top 5, but not number 1. First off, let’s explore what sunlight is:
1. What is Sunlight?
We all know that it’s key to life on earth, photosynthesis for plants, and other things, but do you truly know what sunlight is composed of? Sunlight is composed of many different types of frequencies, more specifically, it is “electromagnetic radiation, or energy, that is emitted by the Sun. It consists of visible, infrared, and ultraviolet light.” (1) Think of the rainbow, or better yet, think of that Pink Floyd album cover with the white light shining into a prism, then splitting into various colors. That’s essentially visible light or sunlight we can see! Did you know that our bodies use various types of light for many different bodily functions and hormone signaling to include the invisible types of light like infrared and UV? Here are some basic definitions and ranges, though keep in mind the ranges are approximate:
Ultraviolet light: light that is invisible to the human eye and is between 10 – 400 nanometers. You have probably heard UV light discussed in cop TV shows when talking about forensics, or when people talk about UVA and UVB light when getting a suntan. Typically shows up between late morning and late afternoon.
Visible light: light that is visible to the human eye, and is between 400 to 700 nanometers, though this range can vary depending on the person. Obviously you can see this light from early morning when the sun is rising to a little past sunset.
Infrared light: light that is mostly invisible to the human eye, and is between 700 nanometers to 1 micrometer, and is divided into 3 basic groups: Far, Mid, and Near Infrared. You get a lot of this type of light starting early in the morning along with visible light.
Sunlight or solar radiation is a fascinating subject that has been heavily demonized, which is unfortunate since we can’t live without it! While there are some of us that are trying to turn that around, there are still many that think they know everything there is to know about how the sun works…though I’m going to bet that we have only started to scratch the surface of our understanding of the sun’s effects.
2. Why is Sunlight so important for us?
Regardless of what we know or don’t know, one thing is for certain: human development was/is directly influenced by sun exposure and going through various cycles based on where we lived, such as Circadian rhythms (daily/24 hour cycle) and Infradian Rhythms (anything longer than 24 hours). How you experience these rhythms will entirely depend on where you live. For instance, a Canadian’s light exposure and needs are drastically different than someone living in Costa Rica. Maintaining our ability to stay synced with natural rhythms using sunlight is important for the following reasons:
Space and time: allows our bodies to know location, time of year, and time of day.
Bodily processes: by knowing time and location, our bodies know when to turn on or off various types of hormones and other chemical signals, and better manage internal processes overall.
Amazing health: when our bodies’ hormones, signals, and bodily processes work as they should, we experience stable energy levels, incredible health, restorative sleep, increased intelligence, and healthy libido.
3. How do our bodies receive signals via Circadian Rhythms?
It starts with our eyes. Our eyes receive these light signals or frequencies, and transmit these signals to the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus (SCN), which then send additional signals to the rest of the body. Essentially the SCN is the main circadian clock or pacemaker of our body that controls the other smaller clocks. If we get the right light signals at the right time, our circadian clocks run smoothly and in sync with each other. These signals control a myriad of processes, most interestingly, signaling hormones such as Leptin, Cortisol, Melatonin, and many others. Let’s examine a typical day and the general flow of a Circadian Rhythm using generalized milestones:
- Early morning: sunrise signals our bodies to start cortisol production and other “wake up” chemicals and actions. While, cortisol has gotten a bad rap over the years, it is a key signal to our body to wake up and be alert and ready for the day. We want to have higher cortisol in the AM and lower cortisol later in the afternoon on into the evening. Sunlight at this time is more red/purple types of light with a minimal amount of blue light.
- Mid morning: hormonal signaling and various other processes are in full swing, we should be up, alert, and owning our day! Sunlight at this time is still very red/purple, but has a higher mix of blue. It is also when UVA light is more prevalent, and this is a time when you should be outside as much as possible. I know this isn’t great if you work in an office, but taking a couple short breaks in the morning to get a dose of sunshine would be awesome!
- Midday: the sun is starting to hit “solar noon” and UVB light is out and about. Getting sun at this time is also crucial for Vitamin D production, but one should still be careful: unless you have a solar callus built up, and have been getting the appropriate light signals, your body won’t be fully prepared for receiving UVB and might not utilize it as well. That’s why it’s so important to get light periodically from sunrise on out, it helps to prep you and your skin to handle more intense sunshine later on!
-Mid afternoon to early evening: we’re moving out of UVB land and back into UVA and less intense rays. Your body is slowly starting to wind down a bit from being on high alert, but you’re still able to focus and do a lot of physical activities with no issue.
-Evening to night time: the sun is setting or has set, and your body is winding down and preparing for a great night of sleep. Your daytime “alert” hormones and chemicals are slowing down and turning off, and your body is preparing to utilize/increase melatonin and switch over to being sleepy and relaxed. If you’re not dowsing yourself with lots of artificial light at the end of your night, you should be getting sleepy and wanting to go to bed within a few hours of sunset.
There are many more reasons/processes based on sunlight for sure, but I don’t want this post to turn into a novel and we’ll touch on other aspects in later blog posts 😊. In order to use sunlight appropriately to increase your health, you must consider where you live, what season you’re in (summer vs winter), and how to use light on a daily basis. The graphic below illustrates a basic circadian rhythm, and how it might work for you, but keep in mind that it’s only general and your personal rhythms depend on your exact location.
Free license Image Sourced from Wikipedia, made by Yassine Mrabet
4. How does our bodies receive signals via Infradian Rhythms?
While technically anything longer than 24 hours is an Infradian Rhythm, I like to think of Infradian Rhythms in terms of monthly shifts and seasonal shifts throughout the year, but we’ll focus on seasonal shifts related to our light enviornment since it’s easier to illustrate the obvious changes from season to season through the lens of the Northern Hemisphere (the Southern Hemisphere will be the opposite of the info listed below):
Spring: moving out of the short days and long night sof winter, to the world coming back to life! The sun is coming up sooner and staying out longer by a few minutes each day, which means more opportunity for sunlight. It’s very important to get a lot of good sun signaling during this time as it will help orient your body to the changing seasons and prep for more increased sun exposure later that year. Depending on where you live, Vitamin D production should be starting up again.
Summer: we are finally in awesome warm to hot weather, the days are longer and nights are shorter with longer/more chances of increased Vitamin D production during the day. Hopefully you were getting sunlight signaling throughout the day during the earlier parts of the year, so your body is more than capable of handling the increased sun exposure via your awesome solar callus. This is a great time to top off your natural stores of Vitamin D as well!
Fall: the days are starting to shorten and the nights are starting to lengthen, and your opportunities for sun exposure are becoming more reduced day by day. There’s still plenty of opportunity to gather up Vitamin D, but there may not be as long of timeframes to produce it. Hopefully between all the good sunlight signaling and grounding, your body is starting to recognize the seasonal shift and preparing for winter time!
Winter: super short days with little to no chances for Vitamin D production, but still able to get other types of light regardless of where you live. Just because the days are short, doesn’t mean getting light signaling isn’t important. Making sure your body understands what time of year it is, is always important! It has been theorized that the increased melatonin production during the winter time (due to longer nights) is how nature balances out the decreased chances of Vitamin D, but I haven’t seen much research to confirm that. Seems logical though that we would need more vitamin D and less melatonin during a time of long days and short nights, and vice versa in the winter time.
While the discussions and explanations above are simplified, hopefully by now you’re starting to get an inkling for how Circadian and Infradian rhythms work, and just how amazing the human body is. Still seems crazy to me how a simple, free input like sunlight, can do so much for our health, sleep, and hormones. Next week, we’ll touch on artificial light and how it affects our health and vitality and what you can do about it!
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