Transcript
00:00:00I want to talk today in a very summer-like episode about weather. Specifically, I want to talk about
00:00:05sunshine. I grew up in Seattle, Washington, known for its gloomy weather. We used to say,
00:00:10well, the good thing about all the gloom in Seattle is that people from California can't
00:00:13handle it and they go back. Now, the question is, is that nature or nurture? Are some people just
00:00:18naturally attuned to the sun or is it that what you grow up with really, really matters? We don't
00:00:24entirely know, but there are patterns that are useful for all of us to understand so that we
00:00:28can adopt sunshine in our lives in a very productive way. And that's what I want to talk
00:00:33about with you. How do you use sunny weather in a way where you will get happier, but in also a way
00:00:38that it's safe? How do you get the best effect without making faulty decisions?
00:00:50Hi, friends. Welcome to Office Hours. I'm Arthur Brooks, your host. This is a show about the science
00:00:55of happiness, how you can bring more of it into your life and how you can share with other people.
00:00:59This is a show for happiness teachers, as a matter of fact. Maybe you never considered yourself one.
00:01:05I am formally. That's what my university pays me to do. But the truth of the matter is that most great
00:01:10happiness teachers are doing it in their ordinary lives. And that's what I want for you. That's why I
00:01:14provide this material. I'm very interested in public education just as much as I am in education
00:01:20inside my university. And that's the whole impetus. That's the whole motivation behind doing this
00:01:26podcast. Thank you for tuning in. I appreciate it an awful lot. If you like it, please do like and
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00:01:49you like this, other people would as well. You can tell them about the show and we're naturally growing
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00:01:59is helping your friends as much as it is helping you. That's what we're here to do. If you have any
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00:02:26arthurbrooks.com. That's my website slash newsletter. And if you want to do more stuff in person with the
00:02:31community of people who are interested in this, we have a great internet community that's called the
00:02:35Meaning Membership. You can find that at my website. You can also find ways that you can get
00:02:40together in real life IRL. That's retreats that we actually have. You can look for that at retreats.arthurbrooks.com.
00:02:47All together, we have lots and lots of ways to share these ideas. I hope you will continue to take
00:02:52these in and share them with others as well. I want to talk today in a very summer-like episode about
00:02:57weather. And most specifically, I want to talk about sunshine. Now, I've done other episodes that touch
00:03:03on this, and I will do future episodes about weather in general, how you can actually find the place
00:03:09that's most in line with the kind of person that you are. But I want to talk about sunshine and how
00:03:14much you should get and how it actually interacts between psychology and biology in a way that you can
00:03:19use the nice weather, assuming that there's nice weather where you are, so that you can become a happier
00:03:24person. Now, there's a general association between sunshine and happiness. In March of 1974,
00:03:32I realize most of you were not born at that time. I was 10 years old. You can deduce my age based on
00:03:38that. In March of 1974, the number one pop song on the charts was from John Denver,
00:03:44"Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy." That was just a generally understood truth, as a matter of fact. And I remember hearing that. Of course, I was living in a place that didn't have much sunshine. I grew up in Seattle, Washington, known for its gloomy weather, as a matter of fact. We used to say, "Well, the good thing about all the gloom in Seattle is that people from California can't handle it and they go back." Of course, when you live in the West Coast, you think any bad thing is happening in your community is because Californians are moving in. That's certainly what we thought when we were kids. And it was a pretty gloomy
00:03:50place, I have to say. Now, it was okay in May, um, it was okay in July, June, but it was okay in May. And it was okay in May. Um, it was okay in July, June, and it was okay in May. Um, it was okay in July, June, and it was okay in May. Um, it was okay in July, June, and it was okay in May. Um, it was okay in July.
00:04:08Um, it was okay in May. Um, it was okay in July, June was always had this weird weather pattern coming down from the Bering Strait. We used to call June, "Junuary," as a matter of fact, because it tended to get all gloomy and, and et cetera. And the fact that I remember this is because precisely it wasn't sunny all the time, like in Southern California, where I now actually spend a quite a good deal of time, a couple of months a year, as a matter of fact.
00:04:26Now, why do I spend a couple of months a year in Southern California if I were, as I was born and raised in a place that didn't have much sunshine? The answer is because I married somebody who needs more sunshine than me. My wife Esther is from Barcelona. Some of you may follow her work as well. We do a lot of stuff together, as a matter of fact. And Barcelona is like Southern California.
00:04:44It's sunny all the time, it's Mediterranean and people from there, boy, oh boy, they, they, they can't, they just can't live without it. And, and, and the question certainly true with my wife, by the way, when she's not around enough sunshine, she gets really, really grumpy. Uh, she doesn't like it at all. And that's one of the reasons that we like to spend,
00:05:14December and January in, in, in Southern California. I notice it as soon as we, you know, as soon as we get there, you know, we leave our stuff and we go down to the beach. Um, we like to stay in San Clemente, California. That sounds familiar. That's because that's where Nixon went after he was disgraced and impeached and had to leave town. He resigned as president of the United States. He went to San Clemente, California. Boy, do I understand why he went there. Probably he got there and said, it's great not to be in Washington, DC. It's so beautiful. It's so nice.
00:05:44And we get there. And as soon as we get there and go down to the beach, it's like a reawakening in my wife. It's really wonderful as a matter. I like it too, but she really has a big, uh, a big reaction to it.
00:05:55Now, the question is, is that nature or nurture? Are some people just naturally attuned to the sun or, or is it that what you grow up with really, really matters? We don't entirely know, but there are patterns that are useful for all of us to understand so that we can adopt sunshine in our lives in a very productive way. And that's what I want to talk about with you. How do you use sunny weather in a way where you will get happier, but in also a way that it's safe in a way that it actually will be better for you. And then I want to talk after I do that. I want to talk about it.
00:06:25I want to talk to you about what's more important than the weather and what are the sacrifices you shouldn't make to get sunny weather in your life. How do you get the best effect without making faulty decisions on the basis of it?
00:06:38Now, let's start with a basic question. Was John Denver right? Does sunshine on your shoulders actually make you happy? And the answer is in general, yes. There's a, a number of good studies on this. One from the Journal of Sleep Research, um, from 2021. I'll, I'll put this in the notes.
00:06:57This is an article called Outdoor Daylight Exposure and Longer Sleep Promote Wellbeing Under COVID-19 Mandated Restrictions. So this was actually data that were collected while people were, you know, stuck in the house. And then they were given systematic exposure, more sunlight or less, just to see in this kind of quasi-experimental set of conditions whether or not they would get happiness from the sunshine per se.
00:07:16Really well-controlled study, really well done. And what they found was that it is basically true. There are moderately positive effects of well-being from participants when they're subjected to sunshine systematically.
00:07:27So, so what this suggests is that almost anybody can have a mood increase with the right amounts of sunshine, but that some people get more of it. And that's one of the reasons that some people are more likely to go seeking it than others. There's both nature and nurture. There's environmental effects.
00:07:43And there's probably also genetic effects that actually come from this, but just in general. Yeah. Good. Good. Now your results may vary because of some certain pathologies. And I want to talk to you about a couple of conditions under which sunshine is more important to you in a certain part of the population and, and certain cases where for happiness, not just for health benefits or skin cancer or something that, that you should be wary of direct sunshine exposure. Okay. Now the first is the one that you've all heard of.
00:08:11You might find that come February that life feels really bad. Now I worked for a long time at Syracuse University, um, earlier in my career. So in my thirties and some of my forties, I was a professor at Syracuse University. And one of the things that I found was that people would come there from other parts of the country. I mean, professors are on a national labor market and, and they would move to Syracuse. And Syracuse is really, really cloudy.
00:08:39And there's this cloud layer that comes from the great lakes. So January, February, and March, it snows all the time. It's not these big two and three foot snows. It's like six inches a day. Syracuse gets 120 inches a year. I mean, contemplate that in big years, a couple of hundred inches, but that's just in five, six inches at a time.
00:08:59I mean, that means it's cloudy a lot because it's snowing and, and you don't see the sun for a long time. Now that lends itself to all kinds of great and not so great things. But, but when it comes to the sun exposure, what I found was that people became unproductive in February.
00:09:15So I would be co-authoring with other professors and, you know, I'm a Seattle boy. I can put up with it, but those are actually from California or wherever. In about mid February, when I was co-authoring a, uh, academic journal article or something, they wouldn't be getting their drafts in on time.
00:09:30Their work would be notably sloppier. They would be kind of looking disheveled and bummed out. They wouldn't, they wouldn't shave. They're like, what's wrong with you? And the answer is that they were depressed. Why? Because a non-trivial number of them had a, a pathology, had a, a, a disorder called SAD, seasonal affective disorder. Isn't that a clever acronym? SAD. Um, and, and that's actually what we find in good academic studies.
00:09:57One from the actual National Institute of Mental Health from 2023 called seasonal affective disorder, um, in the United States. Like always, all the stuff goes in the show notes. You don't have to remember that or write it down.
00:10:08And it found that about 9% of Americans have this seasonal affective disorder, which makes them more exposed to, to mood disorders when they haven't seen the sun in a long time. And they, they actually get more benefit from seeing sunshine, especially during winter months.
00:10:23So 9%, that's, that's a lot. That's not as many as people who actually like to see the sun and actually get a mood boost from it. But these are people who get especially depressed, um, during long periods, including some of my colleagues.
00:10:35So if you think you have it, then you need to take care of that. I'll talk to you in a minute about actually how to deal with that, because there's actually some interesting studies out of Scandinavia where people don't see sunshine for a really long time.
00:10:47And they've figured out new technical ways to get around it. So more on that in a second. Is it more prevalent in, in higher latitudes in the wintertime? And the answer is yes. And so you see some studies that show that places like Scandinavia have more like 12% of the population with seasonal affective disorder.
00:11:03And, and you get closer to that, you get down to Florida and it's like, you know, more like 5% or something like that. I don't exactly remember the numbers, but it really does vary with respect to how far north you are. And probably it has to do with diagnosis more than the underlying genetic tendency to have this.
00:11:19Okay, good. Know that about yourself. It's really important. So what have we established so far? Most people, practically everybody gets somewhat of a mood boost by getting more sunshine. Some people really, really need it, or they're going to fall on the wrong side of an actual mood disorder.
00:11:36All right. Okay. That's what we've established so far. Let me let the plot thicken a little bit because there's new research. This is where the past 10 years that finds that some mood disorders are provoked by direct sunlight.
00:11:48Okay. Now it's not depression. It's actually anxiety. And this is the cousin mood disorder. Generalized anxiety is a cousin disorder of, of, of clinical depression. And what you find is that some people, they really struggle with their anxiety in really bright, sunny times during the summer months, for example, or when they're spending a lot of time outside, it raises anxiety for them.
00:12:10And there's a hypothesis as to why that's true. And there's a hypothesis as to why that's true. This comes from interesting research, an article entitled Why We Need More Nature at Work: Effects of Natural Elements in Sunlight, Employee Mental Health and Work Attitudes. That's in PLOS One, which is an Apex Science Journal.
00:12:24And the scholars hypothesized that it can stimulate certain neurobiological effects having to do with alertness, which disrupts sleep and they actually exacerbate attention and anxiety. You're too attuned. In other words, it's turning up the dial a little bit too much on you.
00:12:41So that's an important thing to keep in mind. And I have met people who get really stressed out during the summer months and they don't know why, probably because they're getting too much sun.
00:12:49Okay. So in other words, it's a double-edged sword. Do we know if that's as prevalent as seasonal affective disorder? No, probably not is what we find. But if that's you, it's important for you to know about that more in a second about how you can use the sun and have the sun not actually be stressing you out along the way. But it's worth pointing that out.
00:13:08Okay. So we've established another pattern here. Let me go back to the first basic point, which is most people get a moderate mood boost. Why is that? And people who are non-pathological, why is sunshine actually generally good for your mood?
00:13:23Before we get to how you can actually use the technology at hand in our lives and actually just use the sun better.
00:13:31One theory about why sunshine boosts mood is that it interacts with eyes, interacts with your eyes, which are intrinsically photosensitive in the retinal ganglion cells.
00:13:45And in so doing, that affects brain regions that regulate mood and indirectly through the regulation of circadian rhythms.
00:13:53In other words, that actually will affect your limbic system to give you more positive affect.
00:13:59And at the same time, it will make it such that when you're getting sunshine at appropriate times over the course of the day, that you're more likely to sleep when it's dark and be awake when it's light.
00:14:08And that circadian rhythm makes you sleep better. And when you sleep better, you're happier.
00:14:12Those are the two mechanisms that actually have to do with the retinal ganglion cells in your eyes.
00:14:17And Andrew Huberman talks a lot about that because he actually teaches in the ophthalmology department at Stanford.
00:14:24He's a professor of ophthalmology, as a matter of fact.
00:14:26And so he talks an awful lot about how the eyes, which the eyeballs are the only part of your brain outside of your skull, as a matter of fact.
00:14:33And so you can consider that a direct effect on your brain itself.
00:14:38So that's the first reason sunlight is important for your mood.
00:14:42The second has to do with what sunlight produces biologically, and that's vitamin D.
00:14:47We all know that vitamin D is produced by sunlight exposure, and that has antidepressant and anxiety-reducing effects for most people.
00:14:56The anxious people aside that I just talked about a minute ago.
00:14:59It's interesting because we've always known that vitamin D is produced endogenously by the body when you're exposed to direct sunlight on your skin.
00:15:07But of course, a lot of people, especially at high latitudes and who live in gloomy areas, they have to supplement with vitamin D tablets.
00:15:16There's some people who believe there are some, not just nutritionists, but some scientists actually believe now that taking vitamin D in this way is not very effective.
00:15:26That's probably not the mainstream view and everything in this is contested.
00:15:30But what they would suggest is that you need that vitamin D for sure for mood benefits and other physical benefits.
00:15:38But the only good way to get it is actually through the sun as opposed to simply taking vitamin D pills.
00:15:43I take vitamin D pills.
00:15:44I get 5,000 IU per day, and I think it's really important also for hormone balance.
00:15:49But the whole point is that it might not be a perfect substitute for getting out in the sun.
00:15:53Okay.
00:15:54Now, why would this actually work?
00:15:55And the mechanism has not been proved.
00:15:57But there are some candidates for why it might occur, why the mood boost might actually occur.
00:16:02That talks about the antioxidant activity and improved levels of monoamine neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and dopamine.
00:16:08In other words, the vitamin D3 might directly affect serotonin levels, keeping more serotonin in the synapse in your brain, which means you're less perseverant, you're less likely to ruminate on things.
00:16:20And you have higher levels of dopamine, which gives you more anticipation of reward, makes you less anhedonic.
00:16:27And anhedonia is a tendency to not enjoy things.
00:16:32And so you'll just find that you ruminate less and you enjoy more when you have more D3.
00:16:37That's probably the most likely reason that sunshine indirectly through vitamin D is mood boosting.
00:16:43Okay.
00:16:44Now, question.
00:16:45How much?
00:16:46How much sunshine do you need to actually get these benefits that I'm talking about here?
00:16:50And the answer is less than you think, actually.
00:16:53For simple vitamin D synthesis, for example, the estimates range from between 9 and 15 minutes a day of direct sunlight.
00:16:59That's not very much.
00:17:00That's not enough to get a horrible sunburn unless you're really, really super sensitive because of your skin.
00:17:05That depends on season, of course, and location, and self-evidently that depends on skin type.
00:17:12And this is something also that Andrew Huberman has talked about, about not needing more than a few minutes a day of direct sunlight.
00:17:19More than this, and the effect probably does not increase.
00:17:22You probably don't get benefits from it from that.
00:17:25And that's not very much, of course.
00:17:28Many people get a lot more than this.
00:17:29A lot of people, maybe some of you who are watching this, you like to lay out in the sunshine, like lie around the pool.
00:17:35I mean, Mrs. Brooks, she likes lying around the pool.
00:17:40Trust me.
00:17:41And, you know, we live in Northern Virginia most of the time when we're not in those couple of months here in Southern California.
00:17:47And we have a nice pool and it's really great.
00:17:49And in the summertime, she's out there.
00:17:51She really, really likes it.
00:17:52She gets more than nine to 15 minutes today, suffice it to say.
00:17:55And she has a skin type that doesn't get easily damaged by the sun because her skin is a little bit darker, certainly a lot darker than mine.
00:18:02But some people are just real sun worshipers.
00:18:04They take that to a real extreme.
00:18:06Now, here's the obligatory dermatologist warning.
00:18:09I'm not a dermatologist, but we've all heard this since we were kids.
00:18:12There's tons of evidence that too much sun exposure leads to skin damage and aging and various cancers.
00:18:19So, you know, sitting out there without any sunscreen for a really long period of time is probably not ideal.
00:18:24But the research has, you know, it tends to, we tend to take things to a really extreme degree.
00:18:31You know, when we find out that something's bad for you, then everybody doesn't eat it at all.
00:18:35I remember from the 1990s when it turns out that every, when we demonized fat in the diet and nobody ate fat.
00:18:42Stop the insanity.
00:18:43Stop eating fat.
00:18:44And everybody stopped eating fat.
00:18:45It turns out it was horrible for people.
00:18:47People got more osteoporosis and, and, and they got all kinds of weird body dysmorphia and they, it, it affected their brains and so.
00:18:54And so.
00:18:55All right.
00:18:55All right.
00:18:56All right.
00:18:57All right.
00:18:58So, we're going to do this in some optimal ways.
00:18:59And, and that was bad advice.
00:19:00Don't eat too much fat is what it should have been, but that's not catchy.
00:19:02Is it?
00:19:03So when people started talking about how bad the sun was, then of course, parents were just lathering their kids up with tons of sunscreen.
00:19:11And, and then they started to get vitamin D deficiencies, et cetera, et cetera.
00:19:15We need to be balanced and sane about these types of things.
00:19:18And so don't take the possibility of skin cancer to be any indication that you should never have any drugs.
00:19:24Take sunlight.
00:19:25You just need to not get sunburned.
00:19:26For example, be normal.
00:19:28That's the bottom line of what I'm talking about.
00:19:31Now, here's the question.
00:19:32Why is it that some people, they just, they want way, way, way more than they need.
00:19:37One obvious answer is that in our culture, we've decided that having a deep, dark suntan is a sign of good health.
00:19:43And it's, it makes you really attractive and people want to be attractive and look healthy.
00:19:47These are reproductive fitness cues, especially in women is what you find.
00:19:52And, and you know, I've talked a lot about this, about the evolutionary biology of basic attraction between members of the species and, and reproductive fitness and youth and, and, and signs of good health are something that we really want to exhibit, which is one of the reasons that people want long glossy hair.
00:20:08Glossy hair, women do white teeth, for example, a symmetric face, waist to hips ratio.
00:20:14And these are all sort of calculations and things that members of the species, opposite sex members of the species notice.
00:20:20And one of the things is actually having, um, a lot of vitamin D, which is, you know, exposure to the sun is good.
00:20:26And so a little is good.
00:20:27And so people have taken it a lot is better.
00:20:29And so I think a deep, dark tan is considered to be an attractive thing for all of the evolutionary biological reasons that I just covered.
00:20:38That's one reason, but there's also the possibility that this is a genetic tendency to sun worship.
00:20:44And there's really super interesting research that suggests that that is exactly the case.
00:20:48Article, uh, from the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.
00:20:52Yes, there is a Journal of Investigative Dermatology for all you forensic dermatologists out there.
00:20:59This is from 2021 that that's looking for the genetic predisposition to, to exposure to sunshine.
00:21:05And it turns out that some people almost certainly have a genetic tendency to do that.
00:21:09And the way that you look at this, by the way, is of course, by looking at sibling studies and twin studies and identical twin studies and parent-child studies to see.
00:21:18And there's all kinds of good statistical technique techniques to, to, to net out what part of almost any behavior is nature and what part is nurture.
00:21:26Anyway, this study suggests that 58% of sun worship of sunbathing is actually based on a genetic tendency to want to do so.
00:21:35Okay.
00:21:35So why, why would that be the case?
00:21:38Here's an interesting clue to why somebody might be genetically interested in taking a lot more sun than they need to.
00:21:44That genetic tendency is highly positively statistically correlated with a tendency to overuse drugs and alcohol.
00:21:53Huh.
00:21:54Especially cannabis, cannabis and alcohol use.
00:21:57If you want, if you crave, if you like to get high, you also more than likely like to take a ton of sun.
00:22:03What's that all about?
00:22:04Now, one possibility is that as excessive drug and alcohol use are a risky behavior that people will engage in because they, they have a, they have a low aversion to risk.
00:22:16They're kind of, this risk seeking is, which is also genetic generally, that that's, those are risky behaviors.
00:22:23And sunbathing is a risky behavior and all risky behaviors go together.
00:22:26So that's one hypothesis.
00:22:28You take all kinds of risks, like, like smoking dope and getting, and getting drunk and, and laying out for three hours a day.
00:22:34So that's one interpretation.
00:22:36Another interpretation that I actually favor, that I think is actually more plausible is this.
00:22:41Sun exposure probably soothes people with natural substance use and mood disorders.
00:22:48Now, one of the things that I've talked about in this show, and that is sort of common sense, is that people who drink a lot and, and, and like to use drugs, they often are self-treating, um, natural levels of mood disorder.
00:23:01Not, maybe not mood disorders to the point that are, that are, that are clinical, that require, you know, pharmacological intervention, but they might be uncomfortable with levels of anxiety.
00:23:12And there's some evidence that one of the best predictors of alcohol use overuse is that you're anxious person, you know, anxious people with, with hard jobs.
00:23:21They tend to drink more than people who don't, right.
00:23:23And they're self-treating.
00:23:24Obviously this is just medication in one sense.
00:23:27So if that's the case, then if you have a tendency to perhaps have a subclinical level of anxiety or, or depression, and you want to use drugs and alcohol, or you do use drugs and alcohol.
00:23:38Another thing you might do as well is just to like lay out longer than you need to, to take as much sun as you possibly can, to max out the mood boost you could possibly get.
00:23:47This is a way that you're, you're trying to treat yourself, as a matter of fact.
00:23:51As a matter of fact, maybe that's one of the ways that you can stay off the sauce.
00:23:54I find that it's easier for me to not get high if I'm laying out all the time.
00:23:58I think that actually, that's a pretty plausible explanation, because that's one of the things that I see in a lot of my work, that people are always trying to treat themselves.
00:24:06People are always actually looking for something in their environment, behaviorally or chemically, to balance some sort of a storm that's going on in their heads.
00:24:15I see this constantly, um, with my students.
00:24:17I especially see this with high achievers and strivers.
00:24:20Some of you, there aren't that many people who, who consume this show, for example, who are not trying to live their best life.
00:24:27Why you're watching this show is you want an edge, right? And good for you.
00:24:31But that also means that you're going to be naturally at risk for all sorts of anxiety related behaviors.
00:24:37Um, such as drinking too much, for example, or in this case, maybe overuse of the sun.
00:24:43Right now, you're like Neo in the Matrix.
00:24:47You can keep scrolling, experiencing a simulation of life.
00:24:50Or you can wake up to how your attention is being harvested for profit.
00:24:55It's happening to people all over the world right now.
00:24:58You don't want to be productized like this anymore.
00:25:01But it's hard.
00:25:02Tech addiction is so potent because it's been designed to tap into your dopamine system.
00:25:07Just like heroin, porn, gambling.
00:25:09You've got the cravings.
00:25:10You're addicted.
00:25:11You don't like it, and I don't either.
00:25:13But I can't just tell you to stop doing it.
00:25:14That's hard.
00:25:15If you want to break free from the system, you need an incentive.
00:25:19Here's one.
00:25:20Why don't you join a phone company that pays you not to use your phone?
00:25:24If you want to reduce brain rot, get Noble Mobile.
00:25:27It pays you to use less data.
00:25:29It gives you an incentive to unplug.
00:25:31Noble Mobile is the phone plan that finally aligns incentives with what's good for you.
00:25:36Use less data.
00:25:37Earn money back.
00:25:38And when you do, you'll be living once again in real life.
00:25:42And you're going to like how it feels.
00:25:44We spend a lot of time on this show on the big questions.
00:25:47Questions of meaning.
00:25:49Relationships.
00:25:50The big whys of life.
00:25:52But none of it works very well when you're running on just a few hours of crummy sleep.
00:25:57Here's what the science actually shows.
00:25:59Poor sleep doesn't just make you tired.
00:26:02It can actually make you less happy.
00:26:04You can't build a meaningful life on frequent chronic broken sleep.
00:26:09So, I take my sleep seriously.
00:26:12One of the best investments I've made in this area is my Helix mattress.
00:26:16What I like about Helix is that they recognize something obvious but important.
00:26:21Different people sleep differently.
00:26:23Their website has a short quiz that asks about your sleep position, firmness preferences, and other sleep habits.
00:26:30Then they match you with one of more than 20 mattress models designed around your specific needs.
00:26:35Once that choice is made, the mattress ships directly to your door.
00:26:38It's a simple idea, but it's surprisingly rare.
00:26:41Start with the person, not the product.
00:26:44If you're serious about improving your sleep and your happiness, visit helixsleep.com/brooks for 20% off site-wide and additional offers.
00:26:56Invest in your sleep.
00:26:58Everything else works better when you do.
00:27:01Now, all told, what do we know?
00:27:04Evidence exists for a prudent amount of sun exposure to actually boost your mood and have greater happiness.
00:27:11That's especially true if you have seasonal affective disorder.
00:27:14That's especially not true if you have anxiety provoked by the sun.
00:27:17But for most of us, it's a good thing to do.
00:27:19So here are a couple of rules.
00:27:21Here are the basic rules for doing so.
00:27:23Because as always, the point of this show is to give you protocols that you can actually use in your ordinary life.
00:27:28Number one, make exposure to the sun, if you can, a daily routine like taking your vitamins.
00:27:35Now, why do I say like taking your vitamins?
00:27:37I take a multivitamin.
00:27:39I've taken a multivitamin to balance out gaps in my diet.
00:27:43I'm real serious about my nutrition.
00:27:45I take my macronutrient profile really seriously.
00:27:48I eat a lot of cruciferous vegetables and get a lot of fiber.
00:27:50I also eat a very high fiber diet, et cetera, et cetera.
00:27:53But at the micronutrient level, sometimes there are holes because I travel constantly, for example.
00:27:58And I have found that I feel a lot better when I take a really super high quality multivitamin.
00:28:03This is not a pitch for a multivitamin.
00:28:04We don't have a multivitamin sponsor.
00:28:06You can find them all over the place, the good ones.
00:28:08There's a lot of them out there.
00:28:09But what I don't do is, given the fact that I have sometimes gaps and I take a multivitamin,
00:28:14I don't rush to the conclusion that I should take like 50 tablets of my multivitamin because more isn't better.
00:28:21There's a certain measured dose.
00:28:23That's the right dose.
00:28:24Zero is not enough.
00:28:25And more than two of the multivitamins that I take every day is too much.
00:28:29And I know it's too much because there's all sorts of ways you could become unbalanced.
00:28:33That's the way to think about sunshine as well.
00:28:35Zero is probably not enough.
00:28:37And lying out all day is way, way, way too much.
00:28:40The costs and benefits actually don't work out that way.
00:28:43Something you should do to take care of your body by doing regularly in the same way every day, if you can,
00:28:48is taking a little bit of sunshine.
00:28:50And this gets back to Huberman's work where he recommends incorporating five to 10 minutes a day, which is in that, you know, that basic level that I talked about from those studies before on how much is enough, less than you think.
00:29:04He talks about, you know, five to 10 minutes a day of direct sun exposure in a morning routine.
00:29:09That's, by the way, morning is important because that's before the sun rays are likely to burn your skin and also they're at a nice angle for your eyes.
00:29:16And so that's when you can comfortably walk outside in direct sun exposure, but you don't need sunglasses.
00:29:22That's the way to do it.
00:29:23Getting five, 10, 15 minutes a day of that is really, really super good for you.
00:29:28If the day is cloudy, the exposure can still be beneficial, but you need to compensate by increasing the time outside a little bit.
00:29:34Lots of studies show, by the way, that it's not like you're not getting sunlight when it's cloudy.
00:29:39On the contrary, you're still getting a lot more exposure to the light than you would be inside under artificial lighting.
00:29:45So even a cloudy day, you're getting a lot.
00:29:47You're getting a lot of lumens there, but, um, but you need a little bit more than you would.
00:29:51Otherwise, this is, this is relatively common sense.
00:29:54So, okay.
00:29:55Every day, if you can in the morning before you need sunglasses and somewhere, if it's really sunny around 10 to 15 minutes and a little bit more than that.
00:30:03If it's cloudy, that's the basic protocol for that.
00:30:07All right.
00:30:08Now, if you're one of those people for whom it provokes anxiety, then the way to do that is to get more indirect light exposure instead by actually sitting near a window.
00:30:18And there's a bunch of studies that actually show this too, that like sitting near a window where there's direct sunlight outside, but it's not directly on you is a way that you won't get the anxiety problems, but you will get the benefits of the, of the light exposure.
00:30:30Okay.
00:30:31So that's one way to deal with that.
00:30:33Second.
00:30:34Uh, what if it's not sunny at all?
00:30:36It's a really gloomy time.
00:30:37You're in Syracuse, New York, or you're in Seattle, Washington, or you're in London.
00:30:42And the answer to that actually comes from a research from Scandinavia.
00:30:46Um, there's one interesting article from the journal of affective disorders.
00:30:51It's a study on finished subjects.
00:30:53These are really, these are really good researchers on this.
00:30:56This is an article from the year 2000.
00:30:58So it's pretty old now called bright light improves vitality and alleviates distress and healthy people.
00:31:02And what they had was, uh, um, you know, a treatment and control experiment, which is the right way to do this randomized.
00:31:09And, and some of the subjects were sitting, uh, working for five days a week under six, 15 watt cool white fluorescent bulbs while they were working.
00:31:19And these were the ones compared to the, to the controls that experienced higher vitality and lower depressive symptoms.
00:31:25So it really worked as, as, as, as bright fluorescent, cool light fluorescent bulbs.
00:31:31I mean, pretty bright actually.
00:31:32So it's kind of like what I'm doing right here, here in the studio.
00:31:35This is pretty good, but for several hours a day for five hours a day, that just shows you by the way, how much more light you're getting from the sun in 15 minutes that you're getting from bulbs.
00:31:45But that can be necessary.
00:31:46If you're in Finland, if you've ever been in Finland, um, in the winter of the summer, you know, um, I was in Finland last summer on tour.
00:31:54And it, you know, one of the things that I was recommended is getting up before the dawn, because you've heard me talk about this before.
00:32:00If you've been watching the show that if you get up before dawn, you get this brahma mahurta, the creator's time and research showing that it gives you greater productivity, greater focus, greater vitality for the rest of the day.
00:32:11If you experience the sunrise, it's really very magic.
00:32:14As a matter of fact, I can't do that when I'm in Helsinki in July, because the sun doesn't go down all the way.
00:32:19So you can't do that.
00:32:21Similarly, in February, you're not going to see the sun hardly at all when you're in Northern Scandinavia.
00:32:26And so if this is anything like your experience, you're going to need to replicate the sun.
00:32:30And that's the way to do it is work under brighter light as you're working all day long than you thought you needed to with cool light fluorescent bulbs.
00:32:39Okay.
00:32:40That's a good way to do it.
00:32:41Studies show that that actually will help you an awful lot.
00:32:43Another study actually looks at a different kind of light, which is near infrared light exposure and doing it in the morning.
00:32:50And that works as well.
00:32:51So do a little bit of internet research on this.
00:32:53It's not that hard.
00:32:54PubMed has got all these particular articles that the near infrared light exposure article actually comes from the Journal of Biology.
00:33:01That's a really great journal.
00:33:02As a matter of fact, I'll put these in the show notes so you can read these articles if you actually want a couple of ways to do it, but do it.
00:33:08Okay.
00:33:09Now, one note as a third point that I want to make for light protocols is when to avoid the light.
00:33:15And of course, that's at night.
00:33:16That's what I actually found when I was in Helsinki last summer, that it's hard to sleep.
00:33:21It's hard to sleep because your circadian rhythms get all goofed up if you're really, really far north in the summertime.
00:33:26And that's what a lot of people find.
00:33:28They have a lot more energy, generally speaking, but their sleep is goofed up because there actually is too much light.
00:33:35For those of the rest of us that don't live that far north, it's important that you avoid unnatural light late at night.
00:33:41You're not going to have to worry about it.
00:33:42Once it gets dark, it gets dark, but let your life get darker as it gets closer to bedtime.
00:33:47I've talked about this.
00:33:48Everybody has talked about this, about the importance of not having a lot of light later in the evening and turning down the lights, getting dimmer light in your life, especially for the past, the last two hours before you go to sleep.
00:33:58And at all costs, if you can, avoid screens, avoid the light that comes from screens.
00:34:05There's a lot of work that suggests that blue light has a unique ability to interfere with the functioning of the pineal gland where you produce melatonin.
00:34:14Melatonin is what helps, you know, put you out at night.
00:34:17And if you're not getting sufficient melatonin and you're keeping your cortisol levels high because you've been looking at a screen, that's going to be really bad for you.
00:34:24So what I recommend is that you dim your home's lights about two hours before bed and avoid turning on lights during the night if at all possible.
00:34:33So, I mean, you might have a red light in your bedroom so you don't, you know, kill yourself when you get up to go to the bathroom because that's something that actually, actually doesn't light up your brain.
00:34:43Don't look at your phone in bed ever and make sure that you're putting your phone away about an hour before you go to sleep.
00:34:49That's the right set of protocols to actually protect your, your sleep architecture, the, which comes from melatonin release and the functioning of your pineal gland.
00:34:59So that's really what I recommend.
00:35:00And by the way, putting your phone away an hour before you go to bed is going to be the best thing that's going to happen to your marriage or your relationship too.
00:35:07Trust me on this.
00:35:08And then look into each other's eyes and read her poetry.
00:35:12Anyway, I'm off point, but I do have one last point that I want to make here.
00:35:18People ask me all the time, should I move to get more sunshine?
00:35:23When I was in Syracuse, this was always a big question.
00:35:26Should I retire to Florida?
00:35:27By the way, this is what everybody asks all over the East coast of the United States.
00:35:31If you're in Seattle, you might say, should I retire to California?
00:35:34Should I retire to Scottsdale?
00:35:37Whatever it happens to be.
00:35:38Should you move for the sun?
00:35:41And the answer is probably not.
00:35:44Probably not.
00:35:45Well, now here's what it depends on.
00:35:47It depends on what you're not, what you're moving to, but where you're moving away from.
00:35:50And this is all costs and benefits when it comes to happiness.
00:35:54Number one for your happiness, unless you have a, just a mega seasonal affective disorder problem.
00:36:00Number one is not going to be the sun.
00:36:02It's going to be your relationships.
00:36:04It's going to be the people that you're with.
00:36:05It's going to be your family and your friends.
00:36:07As a matter of fact, to move away from your family and friends to get your six to 15 minutes of direct sunlight a day is generally speaking a really bad deal.
00:36:15Let me tell you about a famous study that, that more or less was in line with this.
00:36:21And you probably heard about it.
00:36:22It's from, it's from David Shkadi and Daniel Kahneman from Psychological Science.
00:36:27Once again, in the show notes.
00:36:29It asked, um, Midwesterners and Californians about what they thought the best weather was.
00:36:36And then it asked, um, who, who was going to have the happiness edge in which place?
00:36:42Now they all, they basically all agreed both the Midwest Midwesterners and the Californians all said, California's got better weather.
00:36:49Well, duh.
00:36:50You know, I mean, you don't have to be, you don't have to be, you have a PhD to figure that one out.
00:36:53And they agreed that Californians had a happiness edge as a result of that.
00:36:59It turns out that the first is well, subjectively at least, right?
00:37:04I mean, some people really like gloomy Cleveland in the, in the winter over sunny California, different strokes.
00:37:11Most people don't, but they were wrong about who had the happiness edge.
00:37:15On the contrary, they found no difference in groups' self-reported life satisfaction.
00:37:20Even in the sunnier climate where California's weather did, at least according to the earlier research I cited, probably raised wellbeing.
00:37:29Midwesterners had other advantages, natural advantages that equalized their happiness.
00:37:35In some cases gave them greater happiness.
00:37:37Among those advantages, doubtless were more close relationships that they had because something had to be balancing it out.
00:37:45And it probably had to do something having to do with humans.
00:37:48Humans are everything.
00:37:49Love is everything.
00:37:50Relationships are everything.
00:37:51Do not sacrifice your love relationships because you think you're going to be a lot better off in the sunshine.
00:37:58That's probably not right.
00:38:00You know, for the last seven years I've been teaching at Harvard university.
00:38:04And you know, there's a, there's a, a, a little known obscure university.
00:38:09I will not name in Palo Alto, California, that, um, sometimes takes a great interest in having Harvard professors move out to sunny Palo Alto, California.
00:38:19And here's how they do it.
00:38:20They invite Harvard professors out there to Stanford.
00:38:24Oops.
00:38:25I said it great university, um, to give a seminar in February.
00:38:29Why?
00:38:30I don't know.
00:38:31Just why don't you come out and, why don't you come out and, and present your paper to our faculty and students in, in February.
00:38:37Okay, good, good.
00:38:38And inevitably, you know, knowing, uh, as some of my colleagues do that I've done some work on weather and happiness.
00:38:45They will ask me, so it was so great out there.
00:38:48How much happier would I be if I lived in a sunny place like Palo Alto, as opposed to a gloomy, snowy, dark place, at least in winter, like Cambridge, Massachusetts.
00:39:00And here's what I say.
00:39:01Cause here's what the data kind of suggests.
00:39:03It will give you a significant mood boost.
00:39:06We talked about that, but it's kind of temporary.
00:39:09It will only give you most of that mood boost for about six months, but the taxes are forever.
00:39:17Choose accordingly.
00:39:18And most certainly don't move away from your family.
00:39:21Okay.
00:39:22You have to decide for yourself, but the bottom line is that love matters even more than sunshine on your shoulders.
00:39:31Let's take a couple of questions before we're done.
00:39:34Tom writes in, uh, to the website at office hours@ArthurBrooks.com.
00:39:39Um, I was a firefighter and EMT and spent over 14 years working as an agent for the U S secret service.
00:39:47Tom, thank you for your service.
00:39:48Um, in my mind, I was living my calling, but it was cut short when I found out that I had an aneurysm in my aorta, which is through his business, obviously, and had to retire.
00:39:57He has surgery.
00:39:58He's all good.
00:39:58Don't worry.
00:39:59But it's too late to go back to those things.
00:40:01He feels.
00:40:02What do you do?
00:40:04Or how do you go about finding your meaning when you feel like you had it and lost it?
00:40:09He had a career, real active career.
00:40:11Now I know something about Tom.
00:40:12Tom likes action.
00:40:14I got it.
00:40:15And he also likes serving other people with action.
00:40:18He's an act.
00:40:19He's a real, he's like captain America.
00:40:22That's what Tom is.
00:40:23I get it.
00:40:24Now, here's the thing to think about.
00:40:26Not reminiscing about the what of your career, but getting in touch with the deep why of it.
00:40:33What's the why?
00:40:34What's the why that it actually gave you meaning?
00:40:36Because remember, he asked about meaning here.
00:40:38Meaning questions are why questions.
00:40:40Why do things happen the way that they do?
00:40:41That's coherence.
00:40:42Why am I doing what I'm doing?
00:40:44That's purpose.
00:40:45Why does my life matter?
00:40:46That's significance.
00:40:47Those are the meaning questions.
00:40:49And think about it in the context of your calling.
00:40:52Why am I going in a particular direction in my career?
00:40:55That's the purpose of my job.
00:40:57But to think about the why as opposed to the specific what is the way to actually get back on track here.
00:41:03Follow the same why in a different context.
00:41:06Is my why truly to serve people who need me?
00:41:09Well, there are ways to do that without the action of those particular jobs.
00:41:14And that takes a little bit of introspection.
00:41:16Maybe a lot of introspection.
00:41:18Service maybe that's less kinetic, but that is actually more connective with people might be the way to do that.
00:41:25But you're not, Tom, you're not going to get it by thinking about the what that you're missing,
00:41:28but rather the why that you can get in other contexts.
00:41:31Good luck.
00:41:32Kirabo Vanessa writes in also to the website.
00:41:35What is the right thing to do for a friend who sometimes doesn't speak the truth?
00:41:42Now, what I'm assuming here is that your friend is not lying, but your friend is simply not saying hard things.
00:41:47Okay.
00:41:48But a friend who's not willing to come out and talk about hard things with you.
00:41:51That's what, that's my assumption of what this means.
00:41:53Kirabo Vanessa.
00:41:54What is the right thing to do for a friend that sometimes doesn't say the truth?
00:41:58Could it be that for them, they're not interested in having a deep friendship?
00:42:01Now, this is a really important difference between different kinds of people.
00:42:07If you are the kind of person who's very comfortable with confrontation.
00:42:12You are in a part of the personality matrix that's high conflict and high honesty.
00:42:18Then you're not going to understand people that don't want high conflict.
00:42:22You're going to assume that they're low in honesty.
00:42:24And the result of it is that you're going to think that they're not very intense or serious about the relationship at hand.
00:42:29Right now, I'm married to a Spaniard.
00:42:32Spain is unbelievably high conflict, but very honest.
00:42:36I come from, you know, Seattle and most people from Seattle are, have this kind of Minnesota type culture.
00:42:43As a matter of fact, many, many, many people actually came from Minnesota and colonized Seattle in its early days, as a matter of fact.
00:42:49And there's an old joke about the emotional intensity of Minnesotans.
00:42:53And I'll tell you right now, those of you who are from Minnesota, don't turn this off and take this in the spirit in which I mean it, which is a spirit of love.
00:42:58There once was a man, a Minnesota, a Minnesotan who loved his wife so much that he almost told her.
00:43:07Okay.
00:43:08You get the idea.
00:43:09That's the difference between particular cultures.
00:43:11I'm going to make an assumption here, Robo Vanessa, about your friend who's not forthright about everything, not lying, but just a little bit conflict averse that your friend, well, that she's, she's not, um, of the same temperature as you.
00:43:28You're probably, you're probably somebody who's as dishonest to shy away from conflict.
00:43:33You need to tell me everything all the time.
00:43:35And maybe that's incredibly uncomfortable for her.
00:43:37Maybe she's conflict averse for some particular reason.
00:43:41That's something that's actually worth respecting.
00:43:43Something that was worth honoring.
00:43:45As a matter of fact, that's something that's probably worth mentioning and, and, and maybe trying to appreciate a little bit.
00:43:51Don't assume that just because she's not forthright about everything that's on her mind that's bothering her, that she's not valuing your relationship.
00:44:00It might be actually just the opposite.
00:44:02Well, time to finish, uh, please let me know your thoughts about this episode.
00:44:07You think I got something wrong?
00:44:08Put it in the comments.
00:44:09We read all the comments.
00:44:10Write to me at officehours@arthurworks.com.
00:44:12Like and subscribe, hit the subscribe button, my friends on, on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple.
00:44:18Leave comments at will, anything you want.
00:44:20I'll read them.
00:44:21I promise I won't be morbidly depressed and have to go outside and get sunshine.
00:44:25When you say something is critical, we want that too.
00:44:27Follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn and all the other social platforms.
00:44:31There's all kinds of content on those platforms that are not just in this show.
00:44:35Um, please do order the meaning of your life, which is my newest book to learn more.
00:44:39A lot of the times when I'm talking about meaning, cause that's what's on my mind.
00:44:42The meaning of your life came out March 31st.
00:44:44Thanks to all of you.
00:44:45It was the number one New York times bestseller and is still selling a lot.
00:44:48I wanted to reach as many people as possible.
00:44:50Maybe get it as a gift for a friend.
00:44:52And I'm looking forward to seeing you next week.
00:44:56Please do tune in again.
00:44:57We'll have an, uh, another episode on another topic.
00:45:00I hope you'll continue to find it useful.
00:45:02Please share it with others.
00:45:03And I hope you have a wonderful.
00:45:05Sunny week.
00:45:06Sunny week.
00:45:07.
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