Rowan Jacobsen

Yeah, it's super complicated, and the messaging has not sort of admitted that, and that was, yeah, a big impetus for the book.

So I had inherited the conventional wisdom from the institutions that it was really bad.

At the same time, I will admit that my instincts were that maybe it wasn't as bad as they were leading me to believe because whenever I was in the sun, I felt good.

And I live in Vermont.

By the time winter was reaching month six, I felt bad, right?

Right.

So I was like, there's more here than we're being told.

Your body wants it.

I mean, we now know that it literally triggers the release of opiates in the brain.

Sunlight.

So yeah, your body wants it and your body rewards you when you get it.

So it really started for me like seven or eight years ago.

I was on this like science journalism fellowship.

So I was just doing research and

Some of those studies hit, the one about opiate release in the brain and other studies showing that when light hits skin, cognition actually improves.

Like your metabolism cranks up a little bit when the body feels sunlight coming in.

And I thought, that's interesting.

That's all good stuff.

Then I came across a couple other studies that seemed to indicate

that sunlight could lower blood pressure, which was really interesting.