Episode 652: The Case for Morning Light

0:00Your body is still remarkably responsive to something as basic as daylight. This is not a biohacking episode. I'm not going to tell you to buy a special lamp or track your lux levels. I just want to make the case for something so simple and so free that we've almost entirely stopped doing it, which is going outside in the morning and letting daylight reach your eyeballs. Welcome to your daily hit of Grace and grit. Your quick dose of inspiration to kickstart your day. I'm Courtney Townley and here is today's hit. I'll be very honest with you from the outside of this. I get consistent morning light in my eyes because I got a puppy. My nine month old great name, Tillie, is an awesome way to force my way out of bed in the morning and out into the natural world as the sun is coming up. She is an early riser. I have long been an early riser, but I've not always walked in the morning outside.

1:05And we hear a lot about the value of this, right? If you follow wellness practitioners on any social media channel inevitably you have come across the value of not just daylight, getting natural light into your eyes, but morning light and evening light. So, Tillie, my nine month old great name, is chomping at the bit every morning to go for her walk. The moment I'm up, she's ready. She is literally bolting to the door. And what started as something that I did for her has become one of the most valuable parts of my day. It's a 45 minute walk outside natural light before the noise of my day begins. My energy activates, my brain gets online, my creative brain gets online. And by the time I come home, I'm genuinely ready to start my day in a way that sitting inside with coffee and a screen never produces. And the research on why that's happening is really fascinating.

2:06Again, circadian rhythm, right? We talked about this a couple days ago. The internal clock that regulates nearly every physiological process in the body is set primarily by light, natural light, hitting your eyes in the morning signals to the brain, but it's daytime. And that cue triggers a cascade. Cortisol rises appropriately to activate your energy. Melatonin production is suppressed. And the timer begins on when your body will be ready for sleep at night. So, research increasingly suggests that daylight is a big deal. Light is one of the primary signals our brain uses. Not just to set our internal clock, but to influence when we feel alert and when our bodies are prepared to rest.

3:10In a study of more than 40,000 adults, greater daytime outdoor light exposure was associated with easier waking, less tiredness during the day, fewer insomnia symptoms and better mood. Remarkably, each additional hour spent outdoors during daylight was associated with meaningful improvements across several of those measures. And more recent research has found that brighter light, specifically during the first two hours after waking, is associated with fewer depressive and stress symptoms. We spend enormous amounts of money trying to optimize our health. But sometimes, the most powerful interventions are ridiculously basic, which is really what we're focusing on all this month. One of those basics is waking up, going outside and letting your body know the day has begun. And there's a flip side to this that I think is really worth calling out, which is that most of us are spending the majority of our waking hours under artificial light.

4:22Fluorescent lighting, the glow of our screens, overhead LEDs, and then wondering why our sleep is disrupted, our energy is inconsistent and our mood is flat. Artificial light does not provide the same signals to the brain that natural light does. And when we spend most of our days in artificial lighting and then expose ourselves to screens laid into the evening, or essentially confusing our body's timekeeping system. And the result is a body that does not know when to be alert, when to wind down or when to go to sleep. So the simple, free, completely unsexy solution to a significant portion of this is more time outside, especially in the morning, especially when it's still early enough that the light quality is doing what morning light is supposed to do.

5:22So you don't need a protocol for this, right? You just need a pattern around this. Get outside in the morning. If you need to go get a great dain puppy, go get one. Before the screen, before the to-do lists, even 10 minutes makes a measurable difference. Your biology is still remarkably responsive to something as basic as daylight. Let it do its job. So tomorrow morning, give it a shot. Before you reach for the phone, you step outside just for a few minutes. Look at the sky, let the light in, move your body a little bit, and notice what it does. To not just how you start your day, but how your day rolls as a whole. If this episode made you think of someone who could use a simpler approach to their health, share it with her. Sometimes the most powerful shift is the most obvious one that we've been overlooking. If this stirred something inside of you, imagine what a whole book of clarity and courage could ignite.

6:28The Consistency Code, a Midlife Woman's Guide to Deep Health and Happiness, goes even deeper into the mindset and practices that create real, meaningful change at Midlife. Grab your copy today over at theconsistencycode.com and keep the momentum alive. The Consistency Code, a Midlife Woman's Guide to Deep Health and Happiness, goes even deeper into the mindset and practices that create real, meaningful change at Midlife.