Lifestyle

10 Surprising Benefits of Sunlight That You Were Not Aware of

Allows for better and deeper sleep It’s no coincidence that people who work night shifts often have lower sleep quality. In some cases, they even sleep… Simi - November 14, 2017

When it comes to many health hazards, it’s easy to blow things out of proportion. News often gets spread by all the wrong means and false information gets spread around. This false information infestation leads to the wrongful assessment of many otherwise beneficial aspects of your surroundings. One such example is something we encounter every day and can never avoid – sunlight. Oftentimes, we heard dire warnings about sunburn and melanoma. These things are indeed true and can occur, but they are a rarity. You would have to be experiencing severe sunburn on a daily basis to even risk getting melanoma. As false information gets spread around, we tend to start believing all sunlight is bad. False information leads to false assumptions. And who ends up suffering in the end? Our organisms, that’s right.

Sunlight is the ultimate life giver and provider of all things necessary for survival. Moderation can be a shortcut to achieving many great things. The same thing goes for sunlight. You only need a little discipline in order to get immense amounts of vitamin D. The so-called “sunshine vitamin” is created when your skin interacts with the sun. By making your skin available for sun exposure, you benefit your body in many ways. Vitamin D actually has more of a hormonal influence on the body. Without it, the body will simply begin to crumble. Let’s see exactly what kinds of benefits we get from moderate sunlight exposure.

Enhances your immune system

Ever since the dawn of the human race, we have been instinctively drawn to the power of sunlight. We only resided in caves for protection during cold nights or winter time. Our priority was sunlight exposure. It’s not a coincidence that you see healthy people out in the sun all the time. The infrequency of getting sick is indeed directly correlated to the amount of time they spend in the sun.

Sunlight really does make sure your immune system works properly. When your skin cells come in contact with the photos from sunlight, they signal the body to produce vitamin D. This incredible and beneficial vitamin has many paramount roles throughout the body. One such role is stimulating T-cell functioning. The T cells are our body’s first and most important line of defense against foreign body invasions and infections.

Also, vitamin D that you get from the sunlight increases the time needed for immune responses. An immune response is simply the time your body needs to pinpoint the location of a threat. The better your innate and adaptive immune response is, a virus or a bacteria has less time to multiply. This directly correlates to the ease of eradication. Annihilating a threat is much easier when the cells haven’t multiplied.

Multiple studies have been conducted on athletes who have spent their entire lives training in the sun. In comparison to hockey players and basketball players, they tend to fall ill rarely. This isn’t due to fresh air or dieting – constant exposure to limited sunlight yields amazing results. By merely venturing out for a walk, you will do your immune system a great favor.

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Enables bone health

With the increased number of publicized bone fractures in sports, the significance of bone health has simply fallen off. Why is this happening exactly? Due to our constant urge to compare and contrast, we often dismiss fractures as being less severe than ligament tears. Such an outlook on health is wrong and can prove to be detrimental to your health in the long run.

For bone health, calcium is important, for sure. Aside from having a sufficient calcium intake, something else is necessary for having a strong and healthy skeleton. That elusive thing is the so-called calcium absorption efficiency. In order to maximize your calcium intake from green vegetables and dairy products, you need to insure your bones absorb it. And there is no better assistant on this matter than vitamin D.

People who have spent much time in the sun in their youth tend to never have osteoporosis or fractures. Even at old age, their bones are able to maintain an excellent way of keeping the atoms together. Athletes who work out in the open tend to have almost three times less fractures than indoor athletes. Several startling studies have been published in order to support this seemingly outlandish claim.

Bone diseases and bone marrow maladies are also non-existent in people who have a habit of spending time under the sunlight. Therefore, having a walk in the sun once in a while isn’t just for mere fun. By exposing yourself to the beneficial rays of the sun, you ensure yourself a future filled with health and strength right at the base of your body. Having a strong skeleton will provide you with a chance to stay active up to very old age. That is a privilege denied to many.

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Gives your Aging Eyes a Youthful Look

When it comes to preserving your vision, there are many things you can do in your youth. Reducing time spent in front of the computer and TV could certainly be a step in the right direction. However, no matter what you do, sometimes, you just can’t prevent macular degeneration. With some people, it’s in their genes to have their vision slowly degrade over the years.

Macular degeneration is actually the leading cause when it comes to complete blindness during old age. However, in order to prevent this from happening, one-factor reigns supreme above every other. That factor is none other than sun exposure. With stimulated vitamin D synthesis, the degeneration of your macula can be stopped right in its tracks. This is best accomplished by allowing the sun to be soaked by your closed eyelids.

How does this happen anyway? Well, one derivative of vitamin D, the so-called vitamin D3 has a special role in your organism. It is tasked with regulating the way your macula behaves. By reducing inflammation, vitamin D3 helps you retain your vision seemingly forever. Although it may seem insignificant at a young age, your future self will be thankful for trying that out.

To harness the effects of the sun and help your ocular health, you literally need 5 minutes every day. You can start by standing in a sunny place in the morning. Close your eyes and allow sunlight to cover your eyelids for a good amount of time. This will stimulate the creation of amyloid beta, a substance that has the role of maintaining proper ocular functioning. By doing this on a daily basis, you will stop visual worsening right in its tracks.

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Makes your metabolism faster and much more efficient

In order to tackle this particular benefit, we need to tackle an ages old myth that is haunting the scientific community like a specter. That specific urban myth is the very notion that UV radiation is always and exclusively bad. We hear this theory said more often than not, and many of us have even started believing in it.

UV radiation can be bad, but only in excessive doses. When being exposed to it at normal rates, you ensure the prevention of perhaps the most dangerous condition of them all – obesity. UV radiation directly suppresses obesity and many forms of metabolic syndrome. This doesn’t even include the immense benefits of vitamin D. By acting independently, UV radiation provides your body with yet another valuable benefit.

Vitamin D now feels like it’s time to step in for a piece of the spotlight. This hormonal vitamin has the ability to increase the way your cells absorb resources and how fast and efficiently they do it. A vitamin D deficiency is directly correlated to worse food digestion and an increased amount of fat tissue. It’s even more surprising when you remember that all it takes is literally allowing the skin to absorb the sunlight.

When in contact with sunlight, your skin releases a compound called nitric oxide. When released, this compound gets into your bloodstream and directly affects intestinal activity, as well as the occurrences in the esophagus. By ensuring that you’re getting enough sunlight, you ensure a fast and healthy metabolism. If you intend to lose weight, always opt for an outdoor option in order to get that special vitamin D and UV boost.

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Allows for better and deeper sleep

It’s no coincidence that people who work night shifts often have lower sleep quality. In some cases, they even sleep for up to twelve hours and still feel tired and exhausted. As baffling as this may seem, there is a perfectly logical explanation for the feeling they have. It all stems from a lack of exposure to sunlight. It was long believed that only the quantity of sleep matters in the long run. Other factors may also determine the way your body will function.

During the time you’re exposed to sunlight, your brain produces a special hormone called melatonin. It’s only under rare circumstances that your body decided to mass-produce melatonin. The production of this hormone directly affects sleep onset. Basically, every component of your sleeping is affected by how much time you spend in the sun.

As it gets darker, your brain accumulates the photons that were absorbed and start increasing melatonin. It causes you not only to be tired, but also to sleep much better. That’s why it’s common for you to feel exhausted after a long day in the sun. While you still have energy, you will tend to feel more tired due to a melatonin surge. If you aren’t used to spending much time in the sun, small doses will do wonders for your sleep problems.

In addition to this, sunlight is scientifically proven to regulate your circadian rhythms. What these rhythms do is regulate every single bit of your organism to help maintain a certain quality of sleep. While you may find such small details unnecessary, trust us – they’re not. By allowing your body to get enough sunlight, every night will be a joy when it comes to sleeping.

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Treats depression, from mild to more serious

Depression can be usually being of one kind of the possible two – chemical or situational. Situational depression is basically the case of your mind feeling an overwhelming amount of sadness due to a certain event. That sadness and disappointment usually project on some events in the near future, but often go away. Thus, situational depression always was and is the less serious of the two possible sorts. With chemical depression, it’s a whole different story.

Chemical depression occurs when your body is devoid of sufficient amounts of the hormone serotonin. When facing a lack of serotonin, you simply are mentally and physically unable to feel any sort of happiness whatsoever. To beat this, drugs aren’t enough. You need a natural serotonin enhancer. What better tool to use than the natural force of sunlight?

It’s been debated, but ultimately proven – direct sunlight exposure does increase serotonin production by a large margin. In fact, the difference between two people can be evident from a mile away, if one tends to avoid sunlight and the other does not. It also turns out that sunlight can treat SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), a form of depression that take place in winter months. What are we lacking during winter months exactly? That’s right, sunlight.

There have been several successful surveys concerning the connection between spending time outdoors and depression. People who work out outside and generally stay out of the house have an impossibility to become chemically depressed. Their brains are simply overrun with serotonin, rendering them unable to harness negativity in any form. So, if you are feeling down and out, don’t go to the doctor right away. Integrate daily walks into your routine, they can greatly improve your mood without your even noticing.

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Boosts height and growth

Vitamin D is still one of the most mysterious vitamins known to mankind. Every time we become amazed by its amazing set of benefits, something new pops up and leaves us in awe even more. Despite the advancements that we’ve made in modern medicine, several aspects of this area will quite possibly forever be a mystery. The correlation between vitamin D and height was too, until recently.

When it comes to height, it’s important to know that studies relating to it need a long conduction time. This particular one lasted for eighteen long years before any results were found. The first piece of data proved that women who are pregnant in the summer have stronger and bigger babies. Also, babies who were in the stomach during the summer experienced far less fractures during their first few years.

Children oftentimes spend their days playing in the sun. This was more common before than it is now, with many youngsters choosing to devote their time to playing inside. Sunlight directly affects the size and width of bones in children. Those who are exposed to the sun have a much higher bone mass than those who don’t.

If you’re expecting a baby, it’s important to have a steady flow of vitamin D during those nine months. This will give your child an excellent basis to grow from, all the way into a strong and healthy adult. When they’re young, you should also let them play outside. Kids who do so tend to grow much more by default.

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Lowers the risk of cancer

Cancer is one of the most enigmatic maladies of the modern age. We tend to try and find a solution every single day, but nothing has been able to eradicate it. This is perhaps one of the most pronounced mistakes when it comes to battling cancer. We tend to focus more on how to eradicate it than how to prevent it. It’s too late when it already starts developing. Simply preventing it from appearing is much simpler.

One thing that has shook the medical community is the correlation between vitamin D and cancer frequency. It has been proven that vitamin C deficiency does indeed increase the risk of cancer. Postmenopausal women that have had cancer have experienced low to alarmingly low vitamin D levels. This means that their exposure to sunlight was at an almost nonexistent level.

Simply exposing yourself to sunlight may be the final blow dealt to cancer. A mere 15 minutes a day can replenish your vitamin D reserves. Just that time period may be enough to prevent you from getting cancer, without you even being aware of the notion. When it comes to patients who already had cancer, results were also amazing.

While receiving therapy, patients also decided to spend time in the sun regularly. Their tumors have been eradicated much faster than initially predicted. Every therapy has a predicted timeline and these people have absolutely smashed it. Vitamin D production means a lot and stimulating it is an investment for the future.

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Prevent multiple sclerosis

Autoimmune diseases can be incredibly tricky because it’s your body turning against you. Some have been resolved and cured, while others still remain a conundrum for the medical community. One such disease is multiple sclerosis. This particular malady affects the central nervous system and incapacitates the entire body permanently. Scientists and medical experts have searched for a possible cure for years.

Recently, a groundbreaking solution was discovered. After a few extensive studies have been concluded, vitamin D was marked as a possible factor in MS prevention. Mothers who have lower vitamin D levels during pregnancy are at a higher risk of giving birth to a child that will suffer from MS one day. Also, exposure to the sun at a young age also bears significance in the whole process.

Children who play sports outdoors almost never contract MS. This is due to a high amount of exposure to sunlight. As vitamin D gets mass-produced within the organism, thus the bodily processes are better regulated. Your body has no reason of going after itself, as it happens with every autoimmune disease.

What may be unsettling is that there is yet no concrete proof of this notion. There are several experimental vitamin D-based medications in the works. If the test trials prove that these drugs are in fact successful, we may be on the brink of something truly amazing. Eradicating autoimmune diseases is pretty high on the list of priorities concerning human existence.

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Maintains cardiovascular health

High blood pressure and heart diseases are the leading causes of premature deaths worldwide. There is seemingly no way to decrease their prevalence in present-day society. Actually, there is and it requires a surprisingly low amount of effort to accomplish this. Increasing vitamin D intake has been proven to increase heart health by a large margin.

There is an alarming but logical trend going on – blood pressure is always higher in winter months. This is directly connected to the lack of sunlight exposure. When your skin absorbs the various forms of radiation from the sun, it releases nitric oxide. When released, it goes into your bloodstream and momentarily decreases blood pressure. Many patients with frequent blood pressure problems and a history of cardiovascular diseases find walks in the sun much more beneficial than actual medication.

UV rays also have a great way of accelerating nitric oxide production. When they come into contact with your skin, the normally ongoing production becomes even more efficient. By getting rid of high blood pressure, you reduce the risk of cardiac arrest, valve failure, strokes and many other potentially deadly health problems.

In addition to regulating blood pressure, sunlight can also give you one more benefit. It is known for decreasing cholesterol levels in individuals in all possible age groups. Be it youngsters or older people with hypertension, sunlight is very good at cholesterol regulation. If you’re already living a healthy lifestyle, not including sunlight exposure in it would be a crime.

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