Morning Sunlight & Your Mental Health

Morning sunlight might be the most underutilized free regulation tool available to us — and in this episode, Amanda breaks down exactly why getting outside within the first hour of waking is one of the highest-return things you can do for your nervous system. From circadian rhythm and cortisol to serotonin, sleep quality, and mood regulation, the science is clear — and the practice is simpler than you think.

3 Takeaways:

1. Your morning sets the stage for your night. Getting outside for 5–15 minutes within the first hour of waking helps set your circadian rhythm, supports healthy energy during the day, and improves your chances of sleeping well at night.
2. Small things matter more than we think. When symptoms are big, we often look for big solutions. But healing is often built through small, consistent actions that support our biology and create a foundation for regulation over time.
3. Modern life often works against our nervous system. Our biology evolved expecting bright light during the day and darkness at night. Morning sunlight is one simple way to reduce that mismatch and give your brain and body the signals they were designed to receive.

• "Happy Light" Recommendations: Verilux® HappyLight w/ Timer ($39)

CLICK HERE for the full show notes, resources, and 3 tangible takeaways!

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Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Regulate and Rewire, an anxiety and depression podcast where we discuss the things I wish someone would have taught me earlier in my healing journey. I'm your host, Amanda Armstrong, and I'll be sharing my steps, my missteps, client experiences, and tangible research-based tools to help you regulate your nervous system, rewire your mind, and reclaim your life. Thanks for being here. Now let's dive in. Today we are chatting about another simple, free physiological lever that you can pull to support your well-being. Specifically, we'll talk about how it plays a role in your mental health. And today we're talking about morning sunlight. I'll also trickle in a couple other light-related things, but this is our focus habit this month inside the membership. For those of you who don't know, I have a mental health membership, the regulated living membership. And every single month we have a community habit. It's a small habit that when you layer them month after month after month, they start to build up the foundational habits that we talk about a lot here on the podcast. Sleep, movement. This is one that helps to feed into your circadian rhythms. So if you don't get any further in the podcast, I will give you the same invitation that I have given them inside the membership. Their invitation this month is to get outside for at least five minutes, but ideally closer to 15 minutes within the first hour of their day. And some of the caveats are you want it to be without sunglasses and the sun needs to be rising. There needs to be light in the sky. So if you get up before sunlight does, can you within the first hour of the day where there is daylight, go outside? So go outside within the first hour of your day for five to 15 minutes, no sunglasses. Now that I've given you that ask, I want to spend the rest of our time together giving you the why, giving you the context behind why this matters. So for most of human history, our mornings looked roughly the same. You woke up with or near sunrise, light hit your eyes within minutes of waking up, you moved your body, you were outside. And that was not some kind of like trendy wellness ask. That was just that was human life. So now here are some rough numbers to make some of what I just said even more contextualized. So for nearly 300,000 years, the sunrise has been humanity's alarm clock. People woke up, stepped outside, they tended fires, they gathered water, they farmed, they hunted, they cared for animals, or simply just moved through their environment in natural light. Now, light bulbs have only been commonplace in homes for about a hundred years. And the truly indoor, screen-based lifestyle is arguably only like 50 years old. So, in the span of human history, that is nothing. Absolutely nothing. Your nervous system was shaped in and for that outdoor environment over hundreds of thousands of years. And it still expects those inputs. It is still looking for those signals every single morning. But what it gets instead for most of us is a phone screen, artificial light, a quick breakfast, maybe just coffee, and then a sedentary commute. And that gap, this gap between what your biology was built for and what modern life actually delivers is one of the most underaddressed drivers of chronic anxiety, depression, chronic stress, autoimmune conditions, poor sleep, and the dysregulation that we talk about week to week here on the podcast. Now, morning sunlight is just a small piece of this modern life biological mismatch, but it is a piece of it. And so while I want to be careful not to overstate this as like, we removed morning sunlight and therefore we caused all modern health problems, because that's not the claim that I'm making. So please do not have your takeaway from today's conversation. Be like, well, Amanda said morning sunlight is magic and it's gonna heal me. Because we know human health, much more complex than that. But this morning sunlight, natural light in general is, is, is, is, and I cannot overstate this, a really important signal for our brain. And there is very well documented possible fallout for the removal of this biological cue. So let's talk about it, starting with some nerdy science, like usual. And if you can stick with me through some of these nitty-gritty details, I will bring it back around to plain English and give you some tangible recommendations. So, some of the science. Your body runs on an internal clock. You have probably heard the term circadian rhythm. It is roughly a 24-hour biological cycle that governs when you feel awake, when you feel tired, when your cortisol peaks, when your melatonin rises, how and when your digestion runs, when your immune system does its maintenance work. Almost every single system in your body operates on this internal clock. And the primary way that that clock gets set every single day is your wake up time and light. Specifically the wavelengths of light that exist in natural sunlight in the morning hours. So getting a little further into the weeds for a minute about the specifics of natural morning light and your eyes. So morning sunlight is really rich in short wavelength blue light. And your eyes, they contain a specialized set of cells called your retinal ganglion cells. And these cells actually have nothing to do with your vision. Their entire job is to detect ambient light and send the circadian signals to your brain. And they require a certain intensity of that light to fire that signal robustly to your brain to start the clock and get all of these biological processes going in the way that we want them to. So this is why, because it needs to be not just a specific spectrum or type of light, but a certain intensity of it. That's why indoor lights just do not cut it as a substitute. So again, giving you some of the numbers. Even very bright rooms top out at about 100 to 500 lux. So lux is a measure of light, intensity, brightness. So 100 to 500. Outdoor light on a cloudy morning is closer to 1,000 to 10,000 lux. And a clear sunny morning can reach more than a hundred thousand lux. So again, lux is the measure of light intensity. And the gap between indoor and outdoor is enormous. So generously, 500 lux indoors compared to 10 to 100,000 lux outdoors. And your biology, because of the hundreds of thousands of years where the sunlight was our alarm clock, your biology needs that intensity. And there is virtually no indoor environment that can truly deliver that. So, summary, these retinal ganglion cells essentially exist to detect ambient light and tell your master clock what time it is. And I'll add a side note here. This is also why screens at night can be really disruptive because they emit blue light in hours when your brain expects darkness, which suppresses melatonin release and can really confuse, can really confuse this clock. So I think you get it, but I'm gonna reiterate. So for most of human history, we got bright light during the day and darkness at night. But today, many people are experiencing what our body understands as dim light during the day because we're inside so often now, and then bright lights at night with screens and TVs and computers. So, in a sense, we have flipped the signaling. Our nervous system evolved, expecting a strong contrast between day and night. And modern life has blurred that distinction. So this is just one other place where we are seeing a mismatch between our biology and our environment. So again, I am not saying sunlight is a cure all. I do, though, want to emphasize that it has a foundational role to play in our well-being. And if it is not a lever that you are currently pulling in attempts to have a more regulated nervous system or to support your health, you may want to consider it. It's free. It's pretty accessible for most of us if we just step outside. So I'm gonna carry on with just a little bit more science. So when morning sunlight enters our eyes, it hits a structure in your brain that sets the master circadian clock. Again, we talked about this. But that signal triggers a cascade of things. So that is something that triggers melatonin getting suppressed, which is what allows you to feel awake in the morning. It also kind of sets the clock for your melatonin release later on. This signal also activates what is called the cortisol awakening response. So this is a natural, healthy spike of cortisol in the morning that gives you that energy and that focus. So morning cortisol is supposed to be high. It is your body's built-in alerting, awakening mechanism. And cortisol, because it's often, right? It's often the villain, it only becomes problematic when it stays elevated all day or into the night because our circadian signal never gets set consistently or properly, or because we just never fully settle back into safety or regulation. Our life is just too stressful. We're constantly releasing adrenaline and cortisol, and that can mess us up in a lot of other ways. And so it's actually this the light and then this morning cortisol spike that sets that timer for when melatonin will rise later in the evening. And so most people focus on their bedtime routine when they are trying to improve sleep. But actually looking at your morning, your morning is largely where sleep quality gets determined because it's setting that timing for our natural buildup of something called sleep pressure, that release of melatonin. The other thing to know about morning light is that it triggers serotonin release. So serotonin is that transmitter that most closely associates with mood stability, calm, general sense of well-being. It's also the hormone or the neurotransmitter that is a precursor, again, for melatonin. So your morning light exposure does not just affect how you feel in the morning. It actually sets the stage for how you feel throughout your entire day, your energy and your mood stabilities throughout the whole day, and then how well you sleep the following night. So when this circadian signal is inconsistent or when it is disrupted, when you wake up and you spend your first hour under artificial light or you never get outside at all, there can be a lot of significant downstream effects. And when cortisol peaks later in the day instead of in the morning, melatonin rises too late, our sleep suffers, our mood suffers, anxiety and depression symptoms can worsen. And we also see the effects extend into metabolism too. So circadian rhythm influences, blood sugar regulation, insulin sensitivity, hunger, and like your hunger and fullness cues, those hormones, energy expenditure. And so when those rhythms are consistently disrupted, research points consistently to increased risk for metabolic dysfunction over time, resistance to weight loss, recovery, muscle development. And research out of the NIH has described disrupted circadian rhythms as one of the most consistent underlying features across mood disorders, not just seasonal depression, but also more broadly, anxiety and depression. I'm gonna repeat that. So that is why Morning Sunlight gets this airtime on the podcast. It is a biologically foundational input. Your physiology sets the stage for your psychology, and your circadian rhythm is a massive, massive part of that stage. And I also know that there are some of you with a little voice still whispering, like, yeah, whatever, Amanda, like it's not gonna matter. I'm too anxious or too depressed for something this simple to make a difference. Like getting out in the morning, sunlight, whatever. And to that little voice in your head, I just want to say, like, bet, if you're thinking this, I want to invite you. Like, what do you have to lose? Try it for three weeks. Wake up at about the same time every single morning, right? Because it's not just morning sunlight, it's a consistent wake up time and morning sunlight. So wake up at about the same time, go outside for five to 15 minutes every morning. And if absolutely nothing changes, email and complain to me. My DMs are always open. I'm maybe I'll send you something for your efforts. So again, my claim is not this is going to cure your anxiety or depression, but if this is, I want again, if this is not a lever that you are currently pulling, the research and the odds are that it will impact something around mood or sleep or energy or metabolism. It will support your well-being and therefore create a little bit more capacity for whatever other life or healing work that you have in front of you. Setting your circadian clock consistently with two of the levers being consistent wake up time and sunlight has such profound ripple effects into your well-being. I think for me, for a long time in my healing, I thought that because my symptoms were so big and intense, I assumed that my healing also was going to require something really big and intense. But more often than not, for me, and what we see every single day in the lives of our clients, it is small things done consistently over time that start to create capacity and safety and the foundation for a lot of our intensity, internal intensity, to begin to settle. So that's a lot of the science. That's some context, that's some why. Hopefully you have some buy-in and you're like, okay, maybe I'll give, maybe I'll give a little sunshine a chance. So, what are some of the guidelines so that you can walk away from today's conversation, understanding a clear ask? What are the guidelines around light and mental health? What is the ask? What does this actually look like practically? How much do you need? When do you need it? The research and the clinical guidance here is pretty consistent. And it says, get outside within 30 to 60 minutes of waking. It kind of adds the caveat that the closer to waking, the stronger the signal for your circadian clock. So the goal is I mean, if you can like hop out of bed and go outside, awesome, love that. But life sometimes life's. So as close to waking up as possible, but within 60 minutes of waking, go outside. Now, on a clear sunny morning, five to 10 minutes is plenty. That's gonna give you all the benefits you need. On a cloudy day, aim for closer to 15, 20 minutes when it's possible. So generally, the cloudier it is, the longer you need to maximize benefits. But this is one of those habits. This is one of those asks where truly something is better than nothing. Like even three minutes outside on a really cloudy day is going to do more for you, considerably, measurably something for you versus staying inside. And it doesn't need to be direct sun. You just need to be outdoors. Be outdoors with the light. Also, asterisk, again, I'll reiterate outdoors without sunglasses. So the research shows that contacts and glasses are fine. The light, these, the luxes and these wavelengths of light still get through. But sunglasses filter out those specific wavelengths that your eyes need to send that circadian signal. And this also probably goes without saying, but please do not stare directly at the sun. Don't do it. Just maybe face generally towards the place where the sun is rising. Let the lights hit your eyes as you are naturally looking around. Maybe you are walking the dog, maybe you're sitting on the porch with your coffee, maybe you're pulling some weeds. That's what I've been doing lately in the morning. Just be outside. You, the goal is you don't have to, you don't have to layer this in. You don't have to, just being outside is the productive thing to do, is the beneficial thing to do. And if you genuinely cannot, cannot, cannot, cannot get outside, whether that's weather, schedule, physical limitations, again, maybe you're awake before the sun on a regular basis, I do want to mention before we close today a few alternatives for helping set your circadian rhythm that I think are worth knowing about. And I'm going to mention these, yeah, like roughly in order of how much research we have about how much of an alternative this can be for setting your circadian clock. So the first thing I'll mention is light therapy lamps. So these are the closest substitute with the strongest, most researched evidence. So a light therapy box is something that's been recognized as, quote, a clinically validated alternative when natural sunlight isn't accessible. So sitting in front of a 10,000 luxe light box shortly after waking for 20 to 30 minutes can replicate like enough of the circadian signal to shift melatonin timing to support this sleep-wake cycle. Again, you do not need to stare directly at it. Your eyes just need to be open with the light reaching them. So you can have that light on you while you read in the morning, while you eat. I know some people who will set it up at their breakfast table. Um, this is what seasonal depression treatment protocols often have built into them. I've talked about this before in episodes where I talk about seasonal depression. And if you are curious, if you do have kind of a funky schedule, you know that there's a lot of mornings where getting out in sunlight is not gonna be possible for you. I will link in the show notes the one that I use often in the winter time in front of myself or my kids in the morning. So the next thing, we've already talked about it, but I'll expand on it, is a consistent wake up time. So I think this deserves a reiterating mention because I do think it's arguably the highest leverage lever of all of the things we're talking about today. So a consistent wake up time, it stabilizes this circadian rhythm, it reinforces that cortisol awakening response, and it builds sleep pressure. So sleep pressure is this biological drive for sleep that makes falling asleep feel natural rather than something that's really effortful. So we want high sleep pressure by the end of the day. Taking a nap in the middle of the day or something, sometimes you may hear sleep specialists talk about like, uh, a nap that's wrongly timed or that's too long or at all can decrease your sleep pressure or your sleep drive in the evening. Now I know, because this is always what someone asks, is like, well, like I've got kids, or what if I go to bed later, you know, if I can't get to bed on time, should I sleep in in the morning? And I know that sleeping in after a rough night feels like the logical recovery move. But what research is showing us is that it often backfires by shifting your rhythm later and then making it harder to fall asleep the next night. So holding your wake time steady, even on weekends, even when you stayed up too late, you know, and as an outlier night, not chronically staying up too late, but as an outlier night, it's actually probably better for you just to go without that one or two hours of sleep, but to hold your wake up time in the long run of sleep hygiene and keeping your circadian rhythm in a cadence. Now, the other thing that supports this rhythm a lot is morning exercise. So this is a well-supported non-light alternative. So again, light is the most significant external cue, but movement is a well-established alternative. So we can influence our circadian rhythms through this pathway, and it doesn't require light input at all. Morning movement, even indoors, sends a meaningful signal. Hey, it's daytime, we are active, and that's something that our biology is going to recognize again from the hundreds of thousands of years where we get up and we move. A couple smaller things is consistent meal timing. So feeding can also be a timing cue similar to light and exercise. So eating your first meal at a consistent time in the morning can reinforce some of. Of these signals internally. And then protecting the evening side of the equation, I think, also has a space in this conversation, especially if morning sunlight on a consistent basis is not going to be possible for you. Protecting the dark end of the cycle is even more important. So dimming indoor lights after sunset, avoiding screens in the hour before bed, keeping your sleep environment very dark can also support a melatonin rise that the morning sunlight is supposed to help anchor for you. All right. Now let's shift back into assuming that you can, assuming that your circumstances, your situations do allow you to get outside at some point within the first hour of your day. I am going to rapid fire just some reflection questions or some suggestions, things to get you thinking about how this might specifically look like in your life. Because you might be thinking, man, I've got one million kids or I've got to rush to work or my mornings are so chaotic. So let's just take a moment here together to brainstorm and see if there's a way that you can personalize this invitation to figure out how it might realistically fit into your life right now. So if you're an early riser, I think this is just going to be easier for you. For those of you with kids, again, chaotic morning, a job that pulls you right into screens. What is the smallest version that's actually doable? If you're like Amanda, it's literally, I'm going to step outside, grab my mail, and come back in. I'm going to be outside for one singular minute. All right, let's do it. Let's get outside for one singular minute in the morning. If that's the ask that feels possible, that feels accessible for you, one minute. Uh, could morning coffee happen outside, even partially, or breakfast? I have a table that I set up for my kids. We go sit on the porch a lot with our morning breakfast. Could you carve into your morning five minutes of a morning walk? This serves as kind of double duty. You're getting some steps in and you're getting some morning sunlight in. And if you are like, Amanda, no, no, no, no, no, uh-uh, not gonna work for me. I have to, have to, have to, have to have to immediately jump on my phone or my laptop, like fine. Could you take your phone or your laptop out to the porch? And could you sit outside while you scroll and check on your email or you look at your schedule or you respond to some things in that first hour of your day? So that way, even if you are looking at a screen, your eyes still also have access. Those special cells that we talked about in your eyes are still also getting access to natural sunlight signals as well. And then for those in climates or seasons where getting outside is genuinely hard. Can you just do the hard thing? Can't, right? Ask yourself, like, can I just step outside briefly? It's like maybe it's okay that it's cold. What does that look like? Or if you're like, no, I'm not doing it, then maybe consider the light box or one of the other ways that you can help set and keep your circadian rhythm consistent. And actually, one more side note, one an un an unplanned, unscripted side note, because this is a question that I often get asked, is can I just sit by an open window? And research shows that even clear glass from windows filters out this specific wavelength and the intensity of sunlight. So the physical barrier of a window reduces light intensity, making it like 50 times, I think was the number, 50 times less effective than being outside. So, really, truly, what can you do to get outside in the morning for at least five minutes? And if that's really, really not ever going to be possible, then what is one or two or three of the other things I mentioned that you could prioritize, strategize, layer into your life now knowing how important and how many different biological and psychological systems run off your circadian rhythm being consistent and supported. And that's it for today's chat, folks. Wanted to come in, give you a little sneak peek at what we're focusing on, what we're chatting about inside the membership, and share with you the details around, again, just a practical, highly accessible, free lever that we can pull to help stabilize our physiology and support our psychology in our daily life. So our three takeaways. Number one, your morning sets the stage for your evening, for your sleep, and for almost every single internal biological function. Get outside for five to 15 minutes within the first hour of your day. Number two, small things matter more than we think. So just re-emphasizing that when our symptoms are big, we often look for big solutions. But this is just a reminder that healing is built through these small, consistent actions that support our biology and create a foundation for regulation over time. And number three is probably my favorite line or reminder from our conversation today, which was pointing out the mismatch between our biology and our environment. The mismatch between modern life and what our nervous system expects. Our biology evolved, expecting bright light during the day and darkness at night. Morning sunlight is just a simple way to reduce the mismatch between biology and daily modern life, to give our brain and our body signals that it is designed to receive. All right, friends, let's spend this week trying to get a little bit more sunshine. And until next week, I'm sending so much hope and healing your way.