As humans we struggle with the concept of balance. Yet science shows that nature wants balance. And instead of completely staying out of the sun, we would benefit greatly from understanding how to reap the health benefits from daily sun exposure while protecting especially our face and décolleté from damage.

Sunlight has several health benefitting aspects - one being: it actually helps us stay lean!

When skin and the eye are exposed to UVR there is a release of α-melanocyte-stimulating hormone (α-MSH) which naturally lowers our appetite and increases our energy expenditure.

For those who want the chemical breakdown of exactly how this happens here goes:

In the central nervous system, α-MSH is cleaved from proopiomelanocortin and then released into different hypothalamic regions to act on melanocortin 3/4 receptor-expressing neurons, lowering food intake, and raising energy expenditure via appetite suppression and sympathetic nervous system.

Most of us know this intuitively, as we tend to lose weight without struggle, when we go on summer-vacation. And this is the reason for it.

In the study they found following:

“In our animal studies, ongoing exposure to low dose ultraviolet radiation (UVR, found in sunlight) reduced weight gain and the development of signs of cardiometabolic dysfunction in mice fed a high fat diet. These observations suggest that regular exposure to safe levels of sunlight could be an effective means of reducing the burden of obesity.”

Read the full study here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5086738/