It seems to me that the whole world has been experiencing sunny skies for the past few days.  I continue to see people posting their daily pictures of beaches, blue skies and sun!  I absolutely love this kind of weather and I don’t think I’m the only one.  I love to watch around me as everyone slowly comes out of hibernation after a long winter.  When the sun shines for the first few hot days of the season, people seem to be much happier on a general scale.

I met some friends at a park in London to sit by a river and enjoy a picnic.  Everyone around us was doing the same and I couldn’t help but think how attuned we are to our world.  When the weather is nice, our personalities tend to be more expansive – we’re more social, we arrange meet ups with our friends and we stay away from home more often.  When it’s cold outside, we often draw inwards – read books, cozy up by the fireplace and stay inside.

I did a little browsing when I got home and found that sunshine even goes as far as affecting the stock market.  Wall Street claims that unseasonably sunny days add up to annualized excess returns.  So let’s think about the effect of sun on mood.  Generally, sunshine makes us feel happy, and when we’re happy, we view situations more optimistically.


Here are some known effects of sunshine…

-lowers pain levels of swollen, arthritic joints
-promotes thyroid stimulation
-regulates and enhances the immune system
-encourages healthy circulation
-stimulates your appetite and improves your digestion, elimination and metabolism
-soothes your nerves and boosts your mood, leaving you with a renewed sense of wellbeing
-increases endorphins and serotonin in your brain (the feel good hormones)
-increases the number of white blood cells which destroy germs
-stimulates insulin production

Next time the sun is out, embrace it!


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