In my bid to keep informing myself about all things fitness and health I watch a lot of very interesting podcasts including ones from Andrew Huberman/Huberman Lab.

Huberman’s platform provides a lot of research on a wide range of topics related to health.

I have been interested in the role of sunlight in our lives for a long time.

The evidence is well-known that sunlight is the foundation of growth for a lot of organisms and it seems sunlight is crucial to optimum human function as well. Regular readers will know I am very big on optimising function.

Light landing on the surface of the eyelids stimulates the release of the hormone seratonin and this hormone begins to wake us up. Seratonin works in the opposite to melatonin which the body releases to help aid sleep.

Light on our skin helps our body manufacture vitamin D and there’s been some research around this subject that has revealed some other extremely interesting facts.

Our bodies are able to manufacture their own natural sunscreen – true. This study followed on from earlier research by Brown University that pinpointed receptors, previously thought to only be in the eye that trigger melanin release which protects skin cells from the damage of the sun’s ultraviolet rays.

There’s also evidence to suggest that by wearing sunglasses too often you shut down the work of the receptors mentioned in the previous paragraph and hence the endocrinal activity that sunlight triggers resulting in less melanin release.

And there’s more – Huberman states categorically that early morning sun directly into the eyes, by that he means without sunglasses and not actually sun-gazing (another interesting topic) results in greater testosterone release in men and women.

It seems keeping our eyes “safe” from sunlight has not been honouring our hundreds of thousands of years of evolution which kind of makes sense.

Bottom line is ditch the “sunnies” from time to time and boost your fun juice!