The last post in this series was quite a hit! In that post, the focus was how to use your diet to increase your resistance to sunburn so that all the benefits of sunlight could be obtained, while minimizing any negative effects. With the right diet, even the palest gingers among us can improve their resistance, and gradually build up a tan and abandon the use of sunscreen, or really cut back on its usage (and I’d stick to physical sunscreens over chemical).
Previously in this series, the benefits of sunlight in the form of vitamin D production were discussed along with the ramifications of vitamin D deficiency.
Along with vitamin D deficiency, another crucial benefit of sunlight (control of circadian rhythms) has been introduced. To top it all off, here’s another: sunlight on human skin increases nitric oxide in the bloodstream, which is important in regulating blood pressure and reducing risk of heart attack and stroke. Sunlight is essential to health.
My previous post explained what sleep scientists have measured during sleep using EEG, and scientists’
current state of interpretations. Included in that post was my definition of objective sleep quality: going through the proper sequence of sleep cycles during the night with sufficient amounts of both stage 3 sleep (slow-wave sleep) and REM sleep. This post will focus on what drives you to be awake during the day, and makes you sleep at night: your circadian rhythm. The term circadian rhythm comes from the latin words “circa” which means “around”, and “dia”, which means day. So, a circadian rhythm is any biological process that cycles around the Earth day, which is 24 hours.
So far this Sunlight Series has discussed exactly what sunlight is, how it is produced, how it interacts with Earth’s atmosphere, what reaches the surface, and an initial look at what happens when it hits your skin. The last post focused on how UV-B radiation creates vitamin D in your skin, Continue reading Sunlight Series- Part 8: Sunburns and Skin Cancer→
The sun’s radiation that hits Earth’s surface was covered over the last post, where I discussed how the depletion of the ozone layer at most high-population latitudes is misunderstood and overblown, and that global dimming has actually reduced the amount of sunlight the surface is receiving on average. Continue reading Sunlight Series: Part 7 – Vitamin D, The Sunshine Vitamin→
