The Return of the Sun
One of my favorite days of the year is the winter solstice. I’ve always been a lover of the sun and the return of the light fills me with anticipation of longer days and the sun’s warmth on my skin. I’m not a big fan of winter or being cold, but this year I’ve been encouraged to embrace the winter rather than just brace myself against it. By “embrace” I mean to lean into the darkness and the opportunity to rest, enjoy winter foods such as cooked root vegetables, soups and stews, and practice adapting to the cold so my body learns to generate more heat. I’m also using this time to produce more melatonin and relearn how to sleep!
At the heart of my new appreciation of winter is a new understanding of light as an essential nutrient. I’m going to repeat that for emphasis. Sunlight is a nutrient that your body relies on every day. Each of us has a different relationship with sunlight and the outdoors. Some of us were even taught to be afraid of the sun and nature. I happen to be the opposite and was the young mom back in the 1990’s whose one-year-old had a tan. At the time, it just felt right to spend our time outside and not put chemicals on his tender skin but I also wondered if I was doing something irresponsible because the cultural messaging said that good moms would use sunscreen on their children to prevent skin cancer.
I look back now and think “thank god I listened to my intuition”. There are always plenty of things to regret over a lifetime but this was not one of them. I now know that natural, unfiltered sunlight is critical to our health. Light from the sun at sunrise sets your circadian clock, providing a daily signal for the cycle of cortisol and melatonin. UVA rays in sunlight activate the production of multiple hormones and neurotransmitters including thyroid hormones, serotonin, dopamine, and melanin, supporting your energy levels, boosting your mood, and building up protection for your skin so that you can access the benefits of higher energy wavelengths of sunlight. The UVB rays that are most feared are the wavelengths that provide your body with Vitamin D, increase the diversity of microbes in your gut, improve your metabolic function, and reduce inflammation in your mitochondria.
Almost sounds like a magical cure for our ailments, doesn’t it? I’m not one to promote quick fixes and silver bullets to solve your health problems but if you are going to do ONE thing, this is it. Fix your light environment. It’s even free and available to us all. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. In the modern world there are many barriers between us and nature. Sometimes they are fears and mental barriers, sometimes they are related to our daily work schedule or family harmony, sometimes it’s just the discomfort of a cold winter day which we can so easily avoid by staying indoors.
Unfortunately, having good intuition about sunlight in one instance, as I did with my children, didn’t make me immune to the effects of modern life. As the children grew and work became a priority, our lives changed, and new technologies developed which took us farther and farther from the influence of natural light. In recovering my own health, I am learning how to prioritize my light environment in today’s world.
Over the next year, I’ll be adding to the Nature Heals section of my website to share more information about natural light. For me, it is very motivating to learn exactly what is happening in my body and why making changes to my lifestyle is worthwhile. Some of the lifestyle changes that are necessary are about eliminating artificial light sources and these are often the trickiest! For example, I’m writing this blog on my laptop as I stare into the bright light of an LED screen. There are adjustments we can make to the brightness and color spectrum of our screens (my screen is red right now) but how do we reduce the overall time spent when so much of our lives and work have come to revolve around these amazing technologies?
These are some of the hard questions of our time but one thing I believe is that we are up to the challenge of answering them. We can discover the pathways for ourselves to sustain optimal health and we’ll each make the world a better place as we learn. Keep following along to learn with me and cheers to the return of the sun once again!
Julie Alessandra is a holistic health coach specializing in cancer recovery and prevention. She has degrees in biology and education and is certified as a practitioner through the Institute of Integrative Nutrition and the Institute of Applied Quantum Biology.