New Research Suggests Soaking Up Morning Sunlight May Improve Your Sleep Quality At Night, Helping You Feel More Well-Rested
The best night’s sleep starts when you step into the sunshine! Soaking up some morning rays can help you regulate your circadian rhythms and help you feel more well-rested.
According to a new study, exposure to morning sunlight improves your sleep quality, regardless of how much time you spend in the sun throughout the day.
We all know that sleep is crucial for our health and well-being, but its importance has been emphasized more and more in recent years.
Sleep can influence health outcomes, such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and depression.
However, the length of time spent sleeping seems to be declining in the general population. An increasing number of people have reported getting insufficient sleep.
In the past, some research has shown that various factors affect sleep, including diet, exercise, and socio-economic conditions.
Sunlight has also been associated with sleep in prior studies, but not much is known about how exactly daily sun exposure affects sleep.
So, the researchers of the new study wanted to investigate how the timing of sunlight exposure—morning, midday, and evening—correlates with sleep quality.
They monitored 103 adults over a period of 70 days. The participants were gathered from an online pool.
JenkoAtaman – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
They ranged in age from 18 to 80 and were almost equally represented across age groups and gender.
The researchers asked each individual to fill out a daily survey about their sunlight exposure and sleep quality. The surveys were completed between 8:30 PM and midnight local time.
Participants made sure to note how long they spent outside in direct sunlight and at what time of day they were outside. A modified version of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index was used to measure sleep quality.
The researchers employed a statistical method called multilevel modeling to control for factors that could influence sleep, such as health, age, and whether the day was a weekday or weekend. It helped them identify long-term sleep patterns and daily fluctuations.
The study found that morning sunlight exposure led to better sleep quality that night. People who went outside in the morning reported falling asleep more quickly, longer sleep time, and fewer awakenings during the night. Additionally, their sleep efficiency (how much of the time they spent lying in bed asleep) was higher.
The amount of time that participants spent in the sun each day did not have much of an impact on sleep quality, suggesting that the specific timing of sun exposure was what mattered most when it came to promoting better sleep. Morning sunlight may help regulate circadian rhythms, leading to improved sleep quality.
There were no strong links between midday or evening sunlight exposure and sleep quality. Some individuals who spent time in evening sunlight actually woke up earlier the next morning.
Hopefully, future studies can go more in-depth into the benefits of morning sunlight exposure, accounting for factors like geographical location, season, skin pigmentation, and artificial light exposure.
The study was published in the Journal of Health Psychology.
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