How to Get Morning Light Without Direct Sunshine

Morning Daylight Question

00:00I have been making a concentrated effort to get outside first thing in the morning to help reset my circadian rhythm. Is it okay to just be outside even though all I really see is the sky above me and the western sky or do I really need to walk 20 minutes so I can see the eastern horizon?

00:22Okay, this is a great question. The person remained anonymous which is also terrific but thank you for your question whoever you are. I get asked this question all the time. Here's the deal. Any amount of ambient daylight that you can get in the first hour after waking will greatly benefit you.

00:37It'll increase your morning cortisol peak, which by the way is a great thing. No, it's not going to give you Cushing syndrome. No, it's not going to make you gain weight. Quite the opposite. In fact, it's going to kickstart so many beneficial mechanisms.

00:49Okay? It's also going to increase your mood focus and alertness all day long as a consequence of that early morning cortisol peak. So, get ambient daylight in your eyes in the first hour after waking. Of course, if you wake up before the sun comes out, you're going to have to wait.

01:04A 10,000 lux artificial light can be beneficial in those circumstances. I don't have any relationship to any company that sells them, but they're out there on the internet. They're all basically equally effective. If you get outside and you can walk eastward, sunglasses off, brimmed hats off, because the light's coming from above and you don't want to olude that with a brimmed hat.

01:24wear sunglasses. Eyeglasses and contacts are fine. If you can do that, great. Many people can't. Many people only have the opportunity to step out onto their balcony of their apartment and it's west facing. Okay, you're still going to benefit from all those photons, all that ambient light.

01:41And the reason I say daylight and not sunlight is that for some reason, it's semantic, but it's semantic and it leads to a lot of confusion. When people hear you got to get sunlight in your eyes early in the morning, they think, "Oh, I have to see the sun as an object."

01:51No. Compare how bright it is at say 9:00 am in the depths of winter on an overcast day facing westward in the morning compared to midnight the night before. It's so much brighter. There's just so many photons and that's what are going to trigger these special cells in your eye.

02:08The intrinsically photosensive melanopsin retinal ganglin cells that literally send a direct connection to your circadian clock set your circadian rhythm. So any amount of ambient daylight that you can get into your eyes, westward, eastward, eastward being better, but westward still being great.

Optimizing Daytime Energy & Sleep

02:25Clear day better than overcast, but you can't control the weather and neither can I. All are going to help increase that morning cortisol peak lead to larger increases in the catakolamines, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, which translates to more daytime energy, improved mood, improved focus.

02:40And here's the real key that most people miss. By spiking all these pro-arousal chemicals early in the day and particularly in the first hours of our day, ideally the first hour itself, you're setting up the whole system to have low levels of these proarousal chemicals circulating come nighttime, come evening.

03:03It makes it so much easier to fall asleep. and cortisol and all these other stimulatory chemicals that you make, they are in opposite phase to melatonin. So by getting them high in the morning and low in the evening and at night with this daylight viewing and that is the most potent stimulus to do that, you're setting yourself up for increased melatonin, your own natural melatonin release at night, and better sleep, more ease in falling asleep, more ease in staying asleep, and more restful sleep, and on and on.

03:34So, the short answer, totally fine to face westward. The other short answer, please remove your sunglasses. Please remove a brimmed hat while you do it. You'll get more ambient light in your eyes that way. If you can rotate eastward and still get some daylight, even better.

03:50If you can walk eastward into the rising sun, even better. Never look at any light, sunlight, or otherwise that's so bright that it's painful to look at without blinking to protect your eyes. You have a natural blink reflex to protect your neural retinas, right?

04:02You don't want blasting your eyes. You don't want to force yourself to hold your eyelids open. But I promise you, promise you, promise you, if you do these things regularly, you're going to benefit tremendously. There's just so much literature on that in humans in all these different populations, ages, etc.

04:19And as a final point, you mentioned that you're benefiting from this to set your circadian rhythm, and that's wonderful. Just as a favor to everybody, I want to take this as an opportunity to tell you that your circadian rhythm when you feel alert and when you feel sleepy is dictated by these mechanisms.

04:33Okay? But

How Your Brain Integrates Light

04:36these mechanisms are slow integration mechanisms. Meaning that your super kaismatic nucleus, your brain's central circadian master clock that organizes all of this is literally integrating the number of photons that you saw light energy in the previous two or three days.

04:54So, if one morning you have to just jump in the car and rush off with your sunglasses on and get to work and you can't do this, fine. Try and get outside for a little bit longer the next morning, okay? If you get a ton of sunlight in your eyes one morning because it's nice and clear and the next day it's overcast and dreary, okay?

05:07or god forbid you stay in bed and scroll your phone which I don't recommend but if you do that your super kaismatic nucleus is making its physiological decisions as to when your cortisol should increase and your melatonin and so on according to your previous two or three days early day light exposure yes late in the day light exposure matters it really does and you want to keep your lights low late in the evening I talked about that just a few minutes ago previous question but that morning bright light is really the thing that sets the whole thing in motion.

05:39And it's your last two or three days of postwaking bright light exposure that really dictates your circadian rhythm. There are other things too. Exercise, eating, social interactions, etc. But that's the biggie. That's the big what they call zeitgeab.

05:54That's the classic language in the circadian literature, the classic timekeeper. It means timekeeper. So if

Handling Missed Days & Jet Lag

06:00you miss a day, double up on the amount you get outside the next day. This, by the way, is also why when you travel someplace, your circadian clock doesn't shift right away. It's still on your previous city's schedule. It takes a few days for things to adjust.

06:12That's a bad thing when you travel. It's called jet lag. It's a great thing when you're at home because it gives you some flexibility. So, you don't have to optimize everything to the point where you're like 20 minutes every day, 10 minutes every day.

06:22Get 20 minutes one day, get five the next, perhaps get 15 the next. Do what you can. More photons, better as long as you blink to protect your eyes. But if you're getting fewer photons, make it a little bit longer and give yourself some ease.

06:34Give yourself some grace. These mechanisms will take really good care of you all on their own. [music] [music]