Why does the sun make me tired?

Imagine that you’re at a beach. Although the sun has not come out yet, there are many people swimming, playing in the sand or just laying down on a beach chair. You decide to leave and come back in 30 minutes, when the tide is lower… When you come back, you notice that almost everyone is sleeping! If you’re wondering why they fell asleep, keep on reading !!

In 2009, scientists discovered a very interesting fact about the sun. They found out that people get tired or sleepy after they’ve stayed under the sun’s heat for a short period of time. They made an experiment on a group of people by exposing them to very bright lights (which were similar to the sun’s rays) while doing scans of their brains. After the tests, they found out that the people they tested were more sleepy and grumpy. However, after reading their study, I still wasn’t very convinced if the sun could make you sleepy, so I did some research of my own.

I found that the sun’s heat evaporates very little amounts of water in your body. The evaporated water obliges your brain to tell your body that it’s time to take a short nap. The reason of this is because when there is a change of temperature in your body that is more than 0.5 degrees, the reaction of your body is by being sleepy, grumpy or tired. Another reason is if you were under the sun for too long, when the water evaporated, your body got dehydrated and this reaction caused some sleepiness. Also, if you have pain in your eyes because of the sun, the more you open them, the more pain you feel. So when you close your eyes the pain goes away a little and it is very easy to fall asleep.

To avoid sleepiness while in the sun, doctors and dermatologists suggest that you wear a hat that covers your ears,sunscreen, sunglasses or to even sit under a parasol. Most importantly, when shopping for sunscreen look for an SPF (Sun Protection Factor) that is suitable for your skin. I usually wear a 55 SPF sunscreen on my arms, legs and neck because you don’t have to apply sunscreen very often if you have a higher SPF. I wear a 60-65 SPF sunscreen on my face (especially under me eyes) because for some reason I burn more easily there. Also keep in mind that you don’t want a really high SPF in your sunscreen because it also means that there are more chemical products in that sunscreen.

By: Purple Pansy

Leave a Reply


WordPress.com Logo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Google+ photo


Connecting to %s