Brighter days: Just a little sunlight each morning boosts health and balances hormones
Take a moment to pause whatever you’re doing and imagine this: the pearly glow of dawn is breaking through your curtains. The coos of a mourning dove float in on the breeze. Someone downstairs just put on a fresh pot of coffee. No blaring alarm clock, no feeling of existential dread. Your eyes naturally drift open and you feel refreshed — ready to enjoy the day ahead.
We all fondly remember mornings like this, specific details aside, but in a world increasingly filled with artificial lights and digital distractions, they may seem altogether lost to nostalgia. But what if they weren’t?
For thousands of years, humans have relied on the sun as their guide and timekeeper. Our ancestors rose along with it, synced their daily routines with its patterns, and thrived because of it. Even birds tend to sing most of their songs at dawn because this fleeting time when the air is still and quiet provides ideal acoustic conditions.
Harness the healing benefits of morning sunlight
Even if you don’t feel like singing to your neighbor (which is totally fine, by the way) getting sun exposure first thing in the morning is the wellness change you didn’t know you needed.
The advantages are far-reaching — you’re not only soaking up much-needed vitamin D, you’re literally telling your cells to wake up and get moving. Your body uses light as a cue to reset its circadian rhythm, signaling to your brain that it’s time to leave the events of yesterday behind and start fresh. The receptor cells in your eyes are most sensitive to light early in the morning, making it best to get outside within the first hour after waking up.
Plus, when you’re in tune with the cycles of the natural world, everything else will seem to fall into place. Health benefits linked to morning sunlight exposure include improved balance of important hormones like serotonin and melatonin which affect your mood and sleep respectively.
A natural tool for balancing cortisol
You might be surprised to find out that viewing sunlight in the morning boosts your cortisol levels by about 50%. Now before you say wait a minute, isn’t cortisol related to stress? You’d be right — it is your body’s primary stress hormone. However, this spike in early-day cortisol is actually good for you in the long run.
After that initial period of elevation, your stress levels will tend to be lower for the rest of the day, and you will get better sleep at night. On top of being well-rested, your immune system, metabolism and focus will also be positively impacted by the sun’s morning rays.
Holistic habits lead to sustainable change
Much of today’s health advice is compartmentalized and tends to focus on relieving symptoms, rather than addressing their root cause. But the body’s systems are more interconnected than we will ever truly realize, so it’s not surprising that when we view our health in a holistic light — quite literally — we begin to feel better.
This story was originally published May 10, 2024 at 5:07 PM.
