This blog post is about making the most of natural light signaling.
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Table of Contents
I was wrong about the sun
This March, I did a 14-day circadian reset with Carrie B Wellness, and I learned that many of my chronic illness symptoms were caused by too much exposure to unnatural light and not enough natural sunlight. I already had transparent, blue-light-blocking screens on my cell phone, laptop, and desktop computer, so I thought that would take care of the blue-light issues. But in those 14 days, I learned so much helpful information about getting the most out of natural light and blocking as much artificial blue light as possible.
Before the reset, I was afraid of the sun because I believed it was harmful to my skin and eyes. I thought that burning in intense sunlight was unavoidable, so I applied sunscreen to every inch of my skin, dressed in protective clothing, or stayed indoors when the sun was too bright. I developed vitiligo as a child and used numerous chemical sunscreens throughout my life. However, I could no longer tolerate them due to my MCAS (Mast Cell Activation Syndrome). I then switched to plain zinc oxide, thinking it was a better option. I had no idea that my skin and eyes needed exposure need to receive natural light at the same time for proper hormone signaling and other vital functions.
Despite everything I had ever been taught to fear about the sun, I learned I needed it to function. I learned to stop misusing sunlight and instead gradually use natural light to build a healthy relationship with it. Read on for what I learned!
Who is Betsy Leighton?
I’m a writer, blogger, and healer dedicated to helping individuals reconnect with their innate peace and wholeness by healing nervous system dysregulation. My personal experience with chronic illness called Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) shapes my work, and my content offers tools to empower those with chronic illness to improve their well-being and take charge of their health.
I created the Sacred Self-Healing Method and am a trained and certified Safe and Sound Protocol provider, an author, blogger, and A Course in Miracles Teacher. I hold a Master of Divinity in Spiritual Counseling and am a trained spiritual mentor, with certificates in sound healing, aromatherapy, nutrition, and Sacred Deathcare. I offer a self-study certificate program in the Sacred Self-Healing Method, provide spiritual counseling and coaching, courses, and supported subscriptions for the Safe and Sound Protocol.
What is MCAS?
Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) is a chronic condition that affects all organ systems. It can cause severe, disabling symptoms every day, including potentially fatal anaphylaxis.
The common triggers for MCAS are infections, toxic exposures including mold exposure and EMFs, trauma, concussions, and stress.
MCAS often occurs with other chronic conditions like Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) and Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS). Managing MCAS is challenging because many healthcare providers are unaware of it, and diagnostic tests can be unreliable. Treatments include antihistamines and mast cell stabilizers in the form of medications and supplements, along with avoiding triggers. Check out this post on managing MCAS.
What is the issue with artificial blue light?
In our modern lives, we are bombarded with artificial light from LED lights in our homes, workplaces, and other indoor spaces. There are several problems with LED lighting:
Many LEDs, especially cool white or daylight LEDs, emit high levels of blue light (~450–490nm). Natural blue light from the sun is great during the day, but artificial blue light from LEDs at night suppresses melatonin, delays sleep onset, and disrupts your circadian rhythm. This is especially problematic with screens, LED bulbs, and street lighting.
In addition, LEDs often have a spiky, uneven light spectrum, unlike the smooth full-spectrum curve of sunlight or incandescent bulbs. Your body may not “read” this artificial light the same way as natural light, which can affect hormonal and neurological signaling.
Many cheap or poorly designed LED lights also flicker rapidly (even if your eyes can’t see it). Some people are sensitive to flicker, which can cause headaches, eye strain, fatigue, or brain fog. LEDs can feel sterile, overly bright, or cause glare. Poor color rendering means colors appear flat or unnatural, which can subtly affect your mood and perception.
Bright LEDs at night can confuse your body’s internal clock into thinking it’s still daytime, especially without morning sunlight exposure to anchor your rhythm.
What is natural light signaling?
Natural light signaling refers to sunlight acting as a powerful biological signal that helps regulate your body’s internal clock, also known as your circadian rhythm. Your brain and body “read” the intensity, angle, and color temperature of natural light throughout the day to guide critical biological functions. Basically, your exposure to natural sunlight at the right times of day signals your body to know what time it is, so that it can put the right amount of energy into the biological processes that need it.
How Natural Light Signals the Body
Here’s a general idea of how natural light signals appropriate body functions:
| Time of Day | Light Qualities | Body Signals |
|---|---|---|
| Sunrise | Dim, reddish-orange light | Wakefulness begins, cortisol rises |
| Midday | Bright, blue-rich light | Peak alertness, serotonin boost |
| Sunset | Warmer, amber light | Melatonin production begins |
| Night | Darkness or minimal light | Deep melatonin production, rest |
What is so helpful about natural light signaling
Your eyes (especially the retina) contain specialized photoreceptors (like melanopsin) that detect changes in ambient light and send that information to the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) — your brain’s master clock. Here is why your eyes need natural light signaling:
- Getting morning sunlight (especially within 30–60 minutes of waking) during the UVA rise period helps anchor your circadian rhythm and improve energy and sleep quality. UVA radiation begins to appear at sunrise and continues throughout the day. Unlike UVB rays, which peak during midday, UVA levels remain relatively constant from morning to evening, regardless of the season or cloud cover. An easy way to know when UVA rises in your area is to use an app like My Circadian. You enter your address, and it shows UVA levels throughout the day, specific to your location. Exposure to UVA light during the UVA rise triggers your body to recognize it is morning and initiates a cascade of critical biological functions, from hormone signaling to digestion.
- Besides getting the cues that natural sunlight offers, limiting blue light at night helps prevent melatonin suppression and insomnia, so you sleep better. Aboiding blue light in the evening also helps your body get the most benefits from being asleep by making the appropriate amount of melatonin and converting it to tryptophan so that you are ready to go in the morning.
- Being disconnected from natural light (e.g., staying indoors, screen exposure at night) can also disrupt the body’s natural signaling, leading to fatigue, mood disorders, and poor sleep. Natural light signaling helps the sleep-wake cycle (via melatonin and cortisol) be in balance, hormone regulation, mood, and alertness, immune and metabolic function.
What stands in the way of natural light signaling?
So, what interferes with natural light signaling?
1. Lack of Morning Sunlight Exposure. I didn’t know until I started going outside every morning during UVA rise that staying indoors all day or not getting direct sunlight in the morning limits the “reset” signal your body needs to set its internal clock. Glass windows filter out UV and some blue light, so even bright indoor light is usually not strong enough (100–500 lux vs. 10,000+ lux outdoors) to prompt your body’s light signaling needs.
2. Excessive Artificial Light at Night. I also didn’t know that blue light from screens, LEDs, and overhead lights mimics midday sun and tricks your brain into thinking it’s still daytime. This suppresses melatonin, delays sleep, and confuses your circadian rhythm. I’ve had considerable struggles with sleep with MCAS, and I didn’t realize there were some easy ways to improve my sleep.
3. Shift Work or Irregular Sleep Patterns. Being awake at night and sleeping during the day conflicts with natural light cues, often leading to circadian misalignment and health issues. That’s why shift workers have higher rates of illness and earlier death.
4. Jet Lag & Time Zone Disruption. Rapid travel across time zones causes your light-based internal clock to go out of sync with the actual day-night cycle.
5. Chronic Indoor Living. Not spending time in varied natural light conditions (dawn, midday, dusk) reduces your body’s ability to track time naturally. Indoor lighting rarely provides the spectrum or intensity of natural sunlight.
6. Light Pollution. Urban environments are filled with street lights, billboards, and glowing windows that prevent complete darkness at night, critical for nighttime signaling.
7. Wearing Sunglasses or Blue-Blocking Glasses All Day. This was a big one for me. I thought sunglasses were necessary to protect my eyes from the sun’s harmful effects. But sunglasses can be counterproductive, especially in the morning, when your body needs blue light to wake up. From what I learned about the damaging effects of not receiving sunlight through the eyes, I stopped wearing sunglasses and opt for a hat instead when it’s bright out.
Why does natural light matter?
Disrupted light signaling has been linked to:
- Poor sleep
- Mood disorders (like depression or anxiety)
- Weakened immune function
- Hormonal imbalances
- Metabolic issues and weight gain
The bucket theory
The bucket theory simplifies understanding symptom reactions with MCAS. Imagine your body as an empty bucket you don’t want to overflow. Reactions to various stimuli fill the histamine bucket at different rates, forming the total histamine level (how full your bucket is). More histamine means more symptoms. By managing triggers, reducing exposures, and taking medications and supplements, you can control your bucket’s level.
Know your typical symptom progression
Understanding your symptom progression during a flare is key to developing your rescue plan. This post discusses how to recognize symptom progression so you can be prepared to address them.
Get my free ebook, symptom log, and meal plan!
Want a tool to easily track your symptoms?
Check out these circadian health tools!
I’m an affiliate with Bon Charge, a company that makes tools for circadian health, and you can receive 15% off your order with my coupon code BETSYL.
Bon Charge offers tools such as yellow– and red-tone blue-blocking glasses, red light therapy devices, PEMF mats, infrared saunas, and EMF-blocking products.
Sign up for the SSP!
I’ve found the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) to be the most helpful bottom-up healing strategy if your nervous system has been overloaded with toxic exposures, including mold or non-native EMFs, chronic infections, concussions, stress, or trauma. The SSP is a passive listening therapy that helps heal nervous system dysregulation. Many people with MCAS and other chronic conditions have nervous system dysregulation stemming from infections, toxic exposures, concussions, and trauma. The SSP is an easy-to-use app that lets you listen to specially filtered music for 30 minutes each day as part of a 5-hour cycle. Studies show the SSP has a profound effect on mental health and chronic conditions. Here’s a short podcast describing the Safe and Sound Protocol.
You can sign up for the SSP here!
Heal your mind!
While the SSP is a bottom-up, somatic therapy for healing the nervous system, the Sacred Self-Healing Method I offer is a top-down nervous system-healing modality that focuses on cognition, attention, perception, and emotion, using the mind’s higher functions. The SSP and the Sacred Self-Healing Method complement each other and together produce lasting results. Here’s a short podcast on my self-healing practice.
I provide one-on-one in-person and remote chronic illness and caregiver coaching, as well as Sacred Self-Healing Sessions based on the Sacred Self-Healing Method, a proven, novel co-creative healing modality detailed in my Books.
Order my books!
Here’s a short podcast highlighting my five books.
My latest book, Living In The Light: Healing with Forgiveness, Sound, and Light, is all about the tools that have been most helpful for me to heal: forgiveness, sound, through nervous system retraining using the Safe and Sound Protocol, and light, through entraining my circadian rhythm with the energy of the sun. Living In The Light is available here!
Rocks and Roots chronicles my solo backpacking journey on the Superior Hiking Trail and my efforts to overcome nervous system dysregulation, gut dysbiosis, and Mast Cell Activation Syndrome symptoms to complete the 328-mile hike successfully.
The Sacred Self-Healing Method ebook is available here and in most ebook retailers!
The Sacred Self-Healing Workbook is available for purchase here!
Betsy’s first book, Sacred Self-Healing: Finding Peace Through Forgiveness, is available here
Companion Recordings
The companion audio recordings of chants, guided meditations, and sound healing demonstrations that accompany the Sacred Self-Healing Method are available for free on my YouTube channel here
What do you think?
I’d love to have your reply below!
Disclaimer
The preceding material does not constitute medical advice. This information is for information purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, cure, or treatment.
