118: Solar Syncing for Metabolism and Good Health
Genesis 1:4 tells us that God created the sun and the moon as markers of time. We know that He created our bodies to work according to these daily and seasonal cycles of light and darkness which is called our circadian rhythm. That includes things like getting regular sun exposure, eating more carbs in the summer and fasting longer in the winter.
We are in our best health when aligned in our circadian rhythm and the sunlight is the biggest contributor to this balance. Listen to this week’s podcast to learn all about solar syncing and how God made our bodies to use sunshine as a healing therapy.
EPISODE 118: Solar Syncing for Metabolism and Good Health
SHOW NOTES
(0:00) Intro
Hello my friend! Welcome back to the club. How are you today?
I am doing fantastic because I’m coming to you from Taos, NM and the kids are at camp
It’s been a pretty fabulous place to incorporate my earthing/ grounding
Sun makes you happy and get you high. It’s called endorphins and serotonin - happy chemicals that are released when you soak up some rays.
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) - also known as the winter blues - It’s a seasonal type of depression that affects a lot of people in the colder, winter months and much of that is due to lack of light exposure.
Contrast that to a day at the beach - you know how exhilarated and exhausted you feel after being at the beach? It’s all the happy chemicals from the sunshine and good electrical vibes from grounding in the sand and the ocean. It’s your circadian rhythm working at it’s finest.
Sunshine and grounding are healing my friend - and luckily they go together like peas and carrots because if you’re outside grounding, you’re outside being exposed to light rays and your body is taking in alllll of the sunformation it needs to properly set your cortisol and melatonin for the day.
(4:39) Week #3 goal of The Genesis Prescription: Soak in the sun
In the beginning God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. Genesis 1:3 - which is on Day 1 of Creation but he doesn’t create the sun and the moon until Day 4 of creation.
The Bible tells us that He IS light and that’s what I’ve always understood the presence of this first light to be. It’s Him.
God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. 1 John 1:5
In my heart and my mind, I’ve always known that God is the Original Source of light, but this week I really paused to sit in this distinction. He is clearly distinguishing order. The sun, the moon, the stars and the entire electromagnetic spectrum of light would be created, but not before He established His presence as what always HAS been and always WILL be.
John 1:1-5 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit - this is the everpresent Light of our lives. This is the most important light for us to seek every day.
Our GP goal this week may be to seek the physical light of the sun, but never forget the most important source of light for us to seek is the spiritual light of our soul. He comes first - always and forever.
God created our bodies to work in sync with the earth and light energy. You know, humans are only able to see visible light, but we encounter the fuller spectrum of light energy in our daily lives.
Although we may not “see” or understand how the various wavelengths of light travel around and through us, we know that God made all of His creation to work together and that He laid the foundation of the universe with purpose and precision just as He knit us perfectly together in our mother’s womb. I am constantly in awe of Him as a Creator.
(9:53) Circadian Rhythms, Cortisol & Melatonin:
Genesis 1:14 God said,
“Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them be signs to mark the seasons, days, and years.
God created the sun and the moon as markers of time.
He created our bodies to work according to these daily and seasonal cycles of light and darkness which is called our circadian rhythm.
Programming Your Ideal Metabolic Rhythm
The 3 most significant inputs that message our bodies about what and when to do things are light, sleep and food. But light is the most influential.
It is what sends the message about making cortisol and melatonin, the two key hormones that anchor us in the day and night.
The sun rises and the sun sets;
And hastening to its place it rises there again.
Ecclesiastes 1:5
This is the perfect cortisol / melatonin verse. And it’s such a good reminder that our God is the God of order. The sunrise and sunset establish order both in the universe and in our bodies.
When the sun is rising, so should cortisol, when it’s setting, so should cortisol. As cortisol goes down, melatonin should go up.
One is our daytime hormone, one is our nighttime hormone
Don’t wear your sunglasses unless you absolutely have to because this blocks those important signaling rays.
Too many of us throw on our sunglasses out of habit - or fashion - rather than necessity.
People who can’t tolerate light without sunglasses - like if you’re uber light sensitive - often have compromised adrenal function, as the adrenals help regulate pupil dilation.
Adrenal dysfunction is a result of poor cortisol regulation which, we know, can be greatly balanced by daily sun input. It’s this one big holistic circle of health.
The other big thing we have to remember is to minimize light at night as much as possible - especially from screens.
Your TV, computer and phone screens all emit blue light which mimics the blue light from the sun that tells your body to make cortisol.
Blue light blocking glasses
(18:30) Seasonal Perspective and Historical Lens:
We know that light flips on cortisol and darkness flips on melatonin, but there are more hormones that behave under the influence of daily and seasonal light.
Insulin, leptin, growth hormone, prolactin, estrogen, progesterone and testosterone are all sensitive to environmental cues which drive metabolic patterns.
Summer is the season of longer light, more warmth and more plant food availability.
Plant foods are carbohydrates, and carbohydrates turn to sugar in the body. So summer and early fall are actually the carbohydrate/sugar season.
Historically this was the time of feasting (because there was more food) and reproductive activity. The body could store more nutrition to grow a baby, get through the leaner times of winter and deliver in spring-friendly weather. It was Time to eat up and be sexy!
Contrast that to the shorter days of winter which act like the balancing “off” switch.
It’s colder, darker and less food is available. This would have naturally led to longer fasts and more sleep.
Winter is the hunker down, hibernation season and, like bears, our bodies rely on stored body fat to supplement the leaner, less predictable food supply. It's the fat burning season!
In modern times, we have endless light and endless food supply.
We have electricity and light from screens. We have carbohydrates available year round, plus the addition of processed carbohydrates in the food supply that were never available to our ancestors.
There’s no forced “off switch” of natural darkness or food limitation.
For our best health we have to hone in these natural cyclical rhythms on both a daily and seasonal basis. That means eating more carbs in the summer and less in the winter. It also means fasting and sleeping longer in the colder months.
As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease. Genesis 8:22
We aren’t designed as static beings, we’re meant to sync with the daily and seasonal changes.
Variation is metabolic magic and it’s why our #1 goal in Feast 2 Fast is metabolic flexibility.
Even though times (and technology) have changed, your body’s original design hasn’t. It will always need the proper input of light, the way God made it.
(24:00) Historical vs modern insight on sunlight:
Sunlight has been used medicinally for thousands of years and it’s only relatively recently - say in the past 50 years or so - that it has been shunned as a holistic therapy.
Ancient Egyptians used the therapeutic use of sunlight, known as heliotherapy, more than 3500 years ago to treat skin disorders.
Hippocrates, known as the father of medicine, prescribed sunbaths for his patients in 400 BC.
In the 1800’s, Florence Nightingale, considered the founder of modern nursing, appealed to hospital designers to include wards that were brightly lit by natural sunlight to positively influence patient health.
In 1903, Dr. Niels Finsen won the Nobel Prize for his success using ultraviolet light to treat tuberculosis.
Dr. Auguste Rollier, known as The Sun Doctor, opened the Institute of Heliotherapy in the early 1900’s. He operated 36 high altitude clinics and successfully treated patients with diseases such as tuberculosis, rickets, smallpox, lupus vulgaris (skin tuberculosis) and various wounds with more intense levels of ultraviolet light.
Sadly, modern “progress” has overshadowed the use and interest in natural sun therapy. In fact, now we’re advised to avoid the sun or to slather ourselves with chemical sunscreen as if either one of those is doing us any good.
(25:53) The ☀️dose makes the poison:
What’s tolerable is going to vary by person.
We can all help bodies better tolerate sun exposure by eating a low inflammatory, real foods diet.
Foods that cause us “fire” (inflammation) on the inside make us more susceptible to catching “fire” on the outside. One of the worst foods for igniting sunburn is vegetable oil.
However, eating photoprotective foods like healthy fats, organ meats and colorful fruits and vegetables full of antioxidants help protect our bodies from burning and sun damage.
Sunlight is like a good champagne. It invigorates and stimulates; indulged in to excess, it intoxicates and poisons. -Sir Henry Gauvain, Heliotherapist, 1922
We definitely don’t want to over do it but remember that we get our best dose of Vitamin D from the sun.
It mixes with the cholesterol in our bodies - which is one of the many many reasons you need cholesterol and you don’t want it too low.
I recently heard a researcher say that you get 10,000 units of Vitamin D with ½ hr sun exposure in summer. Isn’t that amazing?
You always hear that you need to get midday light to make vitamin D and the reason is that that is when there are more UVB rays in relation to UVA. UVA are the more harmful rays and the ones associated with melanoma.
UVB rays are less harmful and the ones associated with less serious skin cancers like basal cell and squamous cell carcinoma. I mean, we don’t want any of it but the latter are less serious and more easily rectified.
For decades, sunscreens only blocked UVB, and not UVA. UVB are also the rays that trigger tan protection which signals us that we’ve had enough and also helps shut out harmful UVA rays.
This was also at the height of the low fat craze and only eating vegetable oils, eating a gajillion carbohydrates because that’s what the food pyramid said to do. Talk about fire on the inside.
Another benefit that’s being studied is sunlight’s effect on nitric oxide which is a molecule produced by nearly every cell in the body that acts as a vasodilator for your blood vessels - so it increases blood flow and lowers blood pressure.
Sun helps release nitric oxide from the skin stores to help this process. So sun is a catalyst for lowering blood pressure and overall cardiovascular health.
(32:49) Relation to Creation:
Underexposure to sunlight is as detrimental as overexposure.
The sun boosts the immune system, kills harmful bacteria, improves skin conditions, releases serotonin, endorphins, and nitric oxide, activates mitochondria and makes Vitamin D. There are SO many ways the sun benefits you - and it’s free!
Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Isaiah 58:8
We know that our Mighty Healer always provides and that the sun is one His best medicines.
You are your best health advocate and your Mighty Physician has given you all the tools you need to be healthy which is what The Genesis Prescription is all about.
So this week, get out and get some sunshine - let that morning and evening light into your eyes and try to get some midday sun on your bare skin a few times this week.
(35:22) Outro & Disclaimer
Thanks for listening! Have a healthy and blessed week!