Recent research raises an interesting question:Can morning light help you stay slim? It looks like it.
To answer that question, a survey was conducted on 54 adults with an average age of 31 years. They wore a wristband that tracked their sleep and light exposure. The participants also kept a food diary.
The outcome of the study is remarkable:how much you are exposed to light does indeed influence your weight. The time is important here. Morning light has the greatest influence on your weight. Participants who were exposed to light more often earlier in the day had a lower BMI.
It was also examined whether the BMI in these subjects might have been lower due to their calorie intake, but even after this factor was taken into account, the BMI of people who see morning light was lower.
Light has a major influence on your biological clock and your sleep-wake rhythm. In addition, morning light probably also influences hormones that determine your appetite and metabolism.
Are people in sunny parts of the world slimmer? That has not been investigated. The relationship between light, time and weight thus seems to exist. The study is too small-scale to prove the connection, but the connections are interesting.
The effect of light on your weight seems to be most noticeable when exposed to light of at least 500 lux. On a sunny day outside, the light intensity is at least 1,000 lux, while a lit room in the house has about 200 to 250 lux light intensity.
