Want to stay current with Arthur’s writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out.
On the Sun Coming Out in the Afternoon.
Methinks all things have traveled since you shined,
But only Time and clouds, Time’s team, have moved;
Again foul weather shall not change my mind,
But in the shade I will believe what in the sun I loved.
So wrote Henry David Thoreau in a journal entry for April 1, 1841, that was later published in The Atlantic. This springtime musing about the passage of time and life’s burdens was a reminder to him that what was truly good and right in his world had not changed but was only temporarily obscured, just as the clouds might block the cheerful sun for an hour or two each day.
I enjoy such poetical contemplation as much as anyone. But in the same magazine these many decades later, I want to understand more literally, in my prosaic social scientist’s way, how sunshine affects well-being. With some research data in mind, you can make the summer sun that rises tomorrow your ally in the search for greater happiness.
In 1971, the singer-songwriter John Denver famously claimed that sunshine on his shoulders made him happy. (As a No. 1 hit single, the song that made the claim probably also made him pretty rich.) Researchers have put this idea to the test many times since, and found that it is basically true. For example, one 2021 study found that exposure to sunlight had a moderately positive effect on the well-being of participants subjected to coronavirus lockdowns.
That finding is an average outcome; your experience may vary. For some people, the effects are very significant, in both directions. This includes those who really struggle when deprived of sunshine: Seasonal affective disorder, a depressive state that occurs during gloomy winter months, occurs in up to 9 percent of the population depending on latitude. Conversely, other people suffer from bright sunshine: One 2016 study showed that although indirect sunlight appears to be uniformly positive for well-being (improving a depressed mood), direct sunshine can raise anxiety for some individuals, the scholars hypothesized, because it stimulates certain neurobiological effects such as alertness, which can disrupt sleep and worsen anxiety.
The prevalence of SAD in northern climes may contribute to the common belief that differences in the need for sunlight may be due to where you were raised. I have seen no studies that would affirm this intuition, but I have plenty of anecdotal testimony from my own family. A native of rainy Seattle, I can take or leave sunshine, whereas my Barcelona-born wife absolutely must get into the sun regularly or bad things happen (to me).
Scientists have several theories about why sunshine generally boosts mood. First, sunlight interacts with the eyes’ intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, which directly affects brain regions that regulate mood, and indirectly regulates circadian rhythms, enhancing both wakefulness and sleep. In addition, many scholars believe that the vitamin D produced by sunlight exposure has antidepressant and anxiety-reducing effects. This mechanism has not been proved, but candidates for why it might occur include higher antioxidant activity and improved levels of monoamine neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine.
So what is the right amount of sunlight exposure? For simple vitamin-D synthesis, estimates range from nine to 15 minutes a day, depending on season, location, and skin type. Much more than this, and the effect probably does not increase. Many people get a lot more sun than this, of course, and some people like to lie outside for hours at a time. Regardless of what happiness benefit sunbathers may be getting, their dermatologists will shake their heads, noting the abundant evidence that too much sun exposure leads to skin damage, aging, and various cancers.
Scholars have looked into why sun worshippers would risk their health in this way, and a group found that 58 percent of this behavior might be genetic, and is associated with higher consumption of cannabis and alcohol. One way to interpret this is that excessive sunbathing is another kind of risky behavior that yields instant gratification, like using drugs; another interpretation is that the sun exposure may be soothing to people with substance-use and mood disorders. You can decide yourself whether sunbathing is better or worse than other self-medication methods.
From the quarter of an hour you need for your vitamin D to the all-day session on the sun lounger frying yourself to a crisp, you will probably find your own happy medium for mood enhancement. And all told, the evidence for a prudent amount of sun exposure backs Denver’s notion that it boosts happiness. You might keep three practical things in mind as you get your solar well-being treatment.
1. Make sunshine a daily routine.
Treat your sun exposure like taking your vitamins, something you take care of by doing in a regular way at the same time every day. The Stanford University neuroscientist Andrew Huberman recommends incorporating five to 10 minutes of direct sun exposure into a morning routine, before the sun’s rays are likely to burn your skin. If that day is cloudy, the exposure is still beneficial but you can compensate by increasing the time outside a bit. If you find that you’re one of those people for whom direct sunlight raises anxiety, look for ways to get more indirect light exposure instead, such as sitting near a window.
2. Avoid light at night.
Unless you are living extremely far north, sunshine near bedtime isn’t much of a problem. But even artificial light too late into the night can have a negative effect on your well-being by suppressing your brain’s melatonin levels, which should be rising as you prepare for bed. That will interrupt your sleep. Clinicians recommend that you dim your home’s lights about two hours before bed and avoid turning on lights during the night if you can. And under no circumstances should you look at your phone in bed.
3. Get your morning light even when it’s not sunny.
In one experiment on Finnish subjects in winter, the participants experienced higher vitality and lower depressive symptoms if they spent at least an hour a day, at least five days a week, under six 15-watt cool-white fluorescent bulbs while working. Similarly, researchers have found that near-infrared-light exposure in the morning can raise well-being. So be prepared to use artificial-light sources when the sun don’t shine.
One last point: Sunlight is good for happiness, but it is only one of many means to improve your well-being and not even the most significant one. Unless you experience particularly grave SAD, you don’t need to make sun-seeking a quest for which you sacrifice other, more meaningful parts of life—such as close relationships, which are arguably the most important factor in determining happiness.
A study undertaken in 1998 by David Schkade and Daniel Kahneman for the journal Psychological Science famously asked midwesterners and Californians about their native climate and the other group’s climate. Both rated California’s as superior because of the sunshine, and both believed this gave the Californians a happiness edge. And yet the study found no differences in the groups’ self-reported life satisfaction, suggesting that even if the sunnier climate did boost Californians’ well-being, the midwesterners had other natural advantages that equalized their happiness—among those advantages, doubtless, were the close relationships they maintained back in Iowa or Ohio.
In fact, Thoreau himself made this very point. We think of him as a bit of a loner when he communed with nature at Walden Pond (where he probably wrote the lines that opened this column): a person who needed nothing but the company of his own thoughts and a bit of sunshine. But two days later, in fact, he wrote in his journal about what he valued most: “Friends will not only live in harmony, but in melody.”
The post How to Keep on the Sunny Side of Life appeared first on The Atlantic.
