Christine Blume

Wenn ich im Alltag ganz viel Stress habe, vielleicht auch keine Zeit, um meinen eigenen Gedanken ein bisschen Raum einzuräumen.

Wenn ich den ganzen Tag nur in einem dunklen Raum verbringe und meiner inneren biologischen Uhr über das Tageslicht keinen starken Impuls gebe, das sind auch alles Faktoren, die dann dafür sorgen können, dass es in der nächsten Nacht nicht gut klappt mit dem Schlafen.

Und insofern, glaube ich, gilt auch, guter Schlaf beginnt eigentlich schon am Tag.

On a usual Saturday, you wouldn't find me here.

And I mean, of course, I don't give TEDx talks every Saturday.

But what I mean is, you probably wouldn't find me in a museum.

Father, if you were looking for me, you'd probably have to go to the mountains.

And that is because I absolutely love hiking.

And in addition to just being outside and being in the nature, what I really like is this feeling of physical exhaustion, sort of this satisfaction you can feel in every single muscle.

And in the evening, when it's time to go to bed, I absolutely cherish this amazing sleepiness that fills you from head to toe.

Now, you might say, well, of course she's tired.

She's been hiking all day.

Plus, not to forget about the effects of supposedly fresh air.

But there is one factor that most likely outweighs the effects of fresh air, and perhaps even physical activity, and that is exposure to natural daylight.

And today, I hope to convince you that we should all appreciate daylight as sort of a natural soporific.

And hopefully, by the end of the talk, you will also recognize that we should all pay more attention to our daily light diet.

But let's start with the question why daylight is so important for our organism, for health, and eventually for sleep.

Now, throughout your body, in each and every single cell, there is a tiny molecular clock ticking inside it.

And to keep these millions of clocks in sync, we have one central body clock that is located in the brain in an area which we call the hypothalamus.

And like the conductor of an orchestra, it communicates the time of day to each of these molecular clocks.