JJ Virgin explains how light acts like a nutrient for your body. Morning sunlight stops melatonin production and triggers cortisol to wake you up. At night, dim red light signals your body to make melatonin and prepare for sleep.
Light is a very big trigger for us. Think of it almost like a nutrient that we need to use wisely. That means in the morning, get up and see the sunlight. This tells your pineal gland, "Hey, shut down the melatonin. It's time to wake up," right? And all your body starts to come online. You wanna do the opposite in the evening. If you're looking at bright lights and blue lights and all of that, you've got your neurons firing, you're very active in the night, it's gonna be very difficult for you to get a good night's sleep. You wanna do the reverse. So in the nighttime, think about what happens as we start to go into sunset. We get that beautiful red sky. I think about my sunsets in San Diego where you actually even can get that green flash, the red sun sky. That is your body getting prepared for sleep. You start to see the red, you start to dim the lights. So the big takeaway here is you want to use lights as if they were a nutrient, therapeutically. In the morning to shut down melatonin production, wake you up, get cortisol going. In the evening to boost melatonin, right, lower cortisol, and prepare you for sleep.
