Photo courtesy of Julie Graham
By JULIE GRAHAM | Contributing Writer
While we wisely invest in nutrition and fitness, let’s not ignore the powerful health elixer that’s often right above us: sunlight.
The Power of Sunlight
That golden, Southern California sunlight we have year-round is not just for all-day pickleball. Sunlight is the master choreographer of your body’s daily rhythms. When we talk about sunlight and health, we are talking about circadian rhythm.
Circadian rhythm may sound like a new-age health term akin to chakra cleansing, but your circadian rhythm is very real and plays a critical biological role in your daily life.
The Role of Blue and Red Light
Your circadian rhythm is your body’s internal clock, orchestrating an intricate ballet of physiological processes—everything from your sleep/wake patterns and digestive processes, to controlling your immune system, blood pressure, heart rate and moods.
It all starts with a tiny Mary-Poppins-sounding organ located in the hypothalamus of your brain. This organ is called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (or SCN).
Imagine your eyes as messengers, relaying information about the world around it to your SCN, which keeps a sharp watch on the information traffic.
The SCN begins to make decisions based on the type of light data it receives—whether it’s the energizing blue light of morning or the calming red light of evening. It begins to choreograph your body’s activities around this abundant information, relaying instructions to all of your organs and your endocrine, lymph, circulatory and nervous systems, your gut microbiome, and even the neurotransmitters in your brain, in order to optimize their function.
The Sleep/Wake Cycle
At its basic level, your circadian rhythm is in charge of your wake and sleep patterns. Upon awakening, your SCN promotes production of hormonal cascades, such as cortisol. Cortisol pumped from your adrenals tells the liver to create glucose, flooding the blood with glucose (also known as blood sugar).
That increased blood sugar provides energy to your brain, heart, muscles, digestive system and metabolism so they’re fully charged with the energy they need to carry out daily functions.
Later, as evening approaches, your SCN interprets the red light of sunset and instructs cortisol to drop and the sleep hormone, melatonin, to rise.
Melatonin takes over the nighttime duties about three hours after the red light-emitting sun goes down. Melatonin quiets the body systems, and allows it to begin its rest and repair cycles.
Modern Day Challenges
Our societal norms don’t allow our natural circadian rhythms to serve the body’s inherent intelligent programming. We stay up too late, well past when our natural “sleep bus” arrives. We dismiss the tiredness and push on because it’s more fun to watch another Netflix episode.
Maybe we are in bed late, scrolling on our phone or iPad, which emits much more blue light than our TV—in fact as much lux (measurement of light) as the noonday sun. Our brain only knows that the sun must be out if all this blue light is hitting our eye receptors. Time to stop the flow of melatonin and get cortisol pumping again.
Here comes your “second wave” of wakefulness and insomnia, and maybe even hunger.
If this habit goes on for too long, the disruption of your circadian rhythm can have serious downstream effects on everything from your moods to your immune system response to your energy production at the cellular level.
Circadian rhythm disruption (CRD) can also dysregulate glucose metabolism and the production and release of insulin. CRD can drive people to irregular eating patterns—usually late-night eating—all of which can lead to variations of metabolic syndrome, including prediabetes, diabetes and obesity.
Nurturing the Circadian Rhythm
Try these powerful strategies to optimize your circadian rhythm.
- Get sunlight (even if it’s cloudy) for 15 to 20 minutes outside before 9 a.m. This blue-rich light cues your body and synchronizes your internal clock for the day.
- Move often—every 20 minutes or so. Stretch, walk, do squats or jumping jacks. Our body is designed for movement, not sitting. Sitting all day shuts down important circadian hormonal cascades.
- Avoid high lux blue light (from phones and computers) after 8 p.m.
- Stop eating three to four hours before bedtime (allowing your digestive hormones to rest for the night).
- Go to bed between 10 and 11 p.m.
- Keep your room dark: Use blackout shades or an eye mask (this will be a game changer).
Synching your daily habits to the rising and setting of the sun over time will bring a wealth of benefits: better sleep, boosted mood, stable energy, balanced hormones, improved metabolism and digestion, and a strong immune system. Honor your body’s innate rhythms—that dance of day and night—and reap the rewards of optimal health.
Julie Graham is a national board-certified health and wellness coach (NBC-HWC)
and is also pursuing her functional medicine certification (AFMC). Her advanced training includes pre-diabetes and diabetes prevention and resolution, and women’s hormonal health. Reach her at julie@butterandsunshinewellness.com or visit butterandsunshinewellness.com.
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