never thought I’d say this, but the movie Twilight can actually teach us something about improving our health.

Have you noticed in the movies that vampires are typically the ones wearing sunglasses when the daylight comes around? They have a good reason… the sun is KILLING them (or in the case of Twilight making them twinkle like a sequence dress, but who’s worried about the details…)

Now, are you a vampire?

It might be cool if you were, but you’re not.

There is no need for you to fear the sun, and as a matter of fact, a lot of health issues are caused because of an extreme LACK of sunlight that you definitely need to know about.

It’s now proven that a lack of sunlight can lead to osteoporosis, cancer, and depression among other issues.

And the SPF 1 Billion sunscreen we’ve been told to wear has now been proven to be a known carcinogen and actually CAUSES skin cancer.

Most people still have no idea about this, but the research is clear, and it will be common knowledge in the next few decades.

Now, as far as the sun being important for the maintenance of healthy vision, you don’t want to find out decades later that you should have took it easy on popping on the shades every time you went out side.

Here’s 4 important reasons that wearing sunglasses can be dangerous for your health:

1.You need natural sunlight to help regulate your hormones. Your ancestors didn’t wear sunglasses. Not that they didn’t need accessories for their animal skin blouses, but it just wasn’t a matter of necessity.

They didn’t NEED to block the natural light from their eyes. Sure they would avoid the hot midday sun, but humans are not nocturnal creatures, so during the daylight is when we would really thrive.

The sun provides an unreplicable spectrum of light that enhances and maintains numerous processes in your brain.

Sunlight that reaches your eyes stimulates the hypothalamus in your brain, which is connected to the pineal gland. The pineal gland is largely responsible for regulating your sleep/wake cycles via the secretion of melatonin (the good sleep hormone).

The natural contrast of light during the day and night that your body (and eyes) are exposed to helps assure healthy hormonal secretions and healthy sleep. Sunglasses inhibit this process. It’s a simple as that.

2. Less adaptable to light and dark. Your eyes operate like any of the other organs in your body: If you don’t use ’em, you lose ’em.

If your eyes are not consistently exposed to the various array of UV light, then your ability to adapt to light will decline as well as your vision.

3. Eye fatigue. Because your eyes are designed to interact with sunlight, wearing sunglasses for long periods of time can become a significant stress. Your eyes are being forced to operate, perceive, and take in data through an unnatural “tint”. In this way, your eyes are actually being forced to work HARDER than normal. And when your eyes are exposed to a constant stress like this, they will inherently become fatigued.

And “over-training” your eyes like this is a surefire way to end up with reading glasses thicker than Napoleon Dynamite’s.

4. Sunglasses with improper UV protection can be far worse than not wearing sunglasses at all. In bright sunlight, your eyes will naturally try to protect themselves from too much UV light getting in by shrinking the size of the pupils. But when you artificially create darkness over your eyes with standard sunglasses, your pupils open up WIDE and allow in even more potentially harmful UV light.

So try to avoid wearing shades in the sun just for the sake of fashion. If you’re going to wear them for temporary eye protection, then make sure that they are truly UV protective. This can be especially helpful if you do any snow-based winter sports to help you avoid “sunburn of the eye”.

And if you just think you’re cooler than me and everyone else, wearing UV protective sunglasses will give you a safer way to rock your shades.

Nutrition also plays a huge role in how our eyes adapt to UV exposure (just like it does in the way our skin ages). It’s really important to eat a wide variety of vision friendly nutrition and have healthy lifestyle practices to maintain your vision for many years to come.

This will save you a ton on expensive glasses (prescription and otherwise) and help contribute to your health and longevity overall.

Companies are well trained at getting us to buy stuff that we don’t really need. And if you can start a trend with fear, then you’ve got a HUGE fortune on your hands.

Now look, I’m not saying that sunglasses are “bad”, and I’m definitely not saying they aren’t “bad-ass”. What I am saying is that you need to be very aware of the time under stress that your eyes are exposed to because of the sunglasses. It is an abnormal thing, no where in nature is this behavior seen, and you just need to be contentious about not wearing them too often.

If your future’s so bright that you have to wear shades, I get it. Just keep it in balance and remember, if you’re not planning on being one of the undead, please take it easy on the sunglasses.