Every cell in our body is tuned to the movement of the planet relative to the sun.
Hopefully most of you know the earth spins once every 24 hours, part of the day is daylight and other part is darkness. Earth travels around the sun, 365 days is how long it takes to travel around that sun.
In the UK summers are very long days and in the winter the days are quite short. Every cell in our body adjusts its biology according to day length.
According to Dr Huberman here is how it works, light inhibits melatonin (sleep hormone). In the summer when days are long or getting longer that means melatonin is reduced, the total amount is less because there is more light. In the winter as days get shorter light cannot inhibit melatonin and so the melatonin signal gets longer.
It’s actually astonishing to know that every cell in our body knows external light length and therefore time of year by way of the duration of the melatonin signal.
In general the longer the melatonin signal the more depressed our systems tend to be, reproduction, metabolism, mood, turn over rates of skin cells and hair cells all tend to be diminished compared to the spring and summer months.
Isn’t it amazing how our bodies correlate with the seasons? I find this fascinating.
The best way to deal with this is to let our bodies adapt to the season, by getting as much sunlight as possible at sunrise, also at sunset and getting no light unless it’s fire or candles at night, if we all do this, our bodies will work with us, not against us, regardless of whether it’s winter or summer, we must adapt to the earth.