How Sunlight Affects Your Mental Health

November 21st, 2017

By Dr. Joseph Mercola

Contributing writer for Wake Up World

Sunlight has a profound impact on your mental health — more so than any other weather phenomenon. That’s the conclusion of a recent study looking at links between weather and depression.1

Mental health data from more than 16,000 Brigham Young University students was used. Assessments had been filled out several times by each person over the course of six years. Each assessment was then matched to local weather data.

Nineteen different environmental factors, including solar irradiance (the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth), cloud cover, rain, wind chill, barometric pressure and smog levels were accounted for.

In the end, the only factor that really mattered was the amount of time between sunrise and sunset. None of the other factors had any significant association with emotional distress — provided there was enough sunlight.

This doesn’t surprise me. It’s been estimated2 that as many as 20 percent of Americans are affected by Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) each winter, suffering from the blues, fatigue and in some cases, more serious depression, as sunlight grows scarce.

What differentiates SAD from regular depression is that a full remission occurs in the spring and summer months.

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