Nowadays we have more than 15 hours of sunshine; June is the month of light. Another thing is that I do in July and August … More heat, yes, but spoken about hours of clarity, this is the time of the longest days (on July 15 there will be 14 hours and 47 minutes of insulation and, in August, exactly one hour less). But if we have a lot of light here, it has no dusk in North Europe for weeks. «In Sweden he did not only do at night, for example you look at heaven in the morning and he looks glow, he is never black. Nowadays he challenged little and little in the morning and recently I kept working at home and I had to hang a blanket on the curtain bar because the glow that was on six did not show me the computer, ”says Daniel Palomo, 42 -year -old Bilbao engineer emigrated to Stockholm.
– It may seem like an advantage of life with light all day … More there than the winter is dark.
– It’s not that much. Here, in the summer, you still dine at six or seven in the afternoon and for me dinner with so much sun is something that I don’t like. As if my mind no longer died. Moreover, having so much light until you feel active and it costs you more to sleep. Anyway, for social life in this country it is a waste of sunny hours.
Daniel has been in Sweden for five years and says that he still doesn’t get used to that summer light. «There are no blinds such as in Spain, only interior blinds that let the light pass. Moreover, the windows in Sweden are enormous compared to those we put in Spain. They build them in this way to take advantage of the sun in the winter months and for cultural reasons, because it is supposed to clearly see that it is ‘hiding’ what is in the house is like a secret or something. I check it on my daily walks with Rocky, our dog. You see families eating, watching TV … in Spain that does not happen ».
“It’s counterproductive”
Daniel usually comes to Bilbao in the summer and cannot resist the pleasure to lower the blinds and take a dark nap. “My partner, who is Swedish, crashed a lot about being able to sleep in the dark in July at four in the afternoon, but I love it.”
Of course, all that light is ‘more’ that they have in the summer, the one who have ‘less’ in the winter. «There are three or four months here in which you do not see the sun. You go to work at night and you leave at night. It is something exaggerated. I met an Australian who needed grape rays in Stockholm in his first winter because his body felt sick and depressed by the sun he had in Australia. And in the north of the country there are bus stops with grape beams because they don’t see the sun ».
It may seem like an eccentricity, but it is a matter of health. «In areas of large Oscuciness in the winter there are people who have breakfast with luminotherapy lamps or special glasses for 30 or 45 minutes that produce a stimulation that is comparable to the affection to go to the street in Spain. It has been shown that the lack of light influences the mood and in those areas they have worse levels of vitamin D, which are activated with the sun, ”explains Javier Puertas, professor of the Faculty of Medicine of the Catholic University of Valencia and vice -president of the Spanish sleeping club (SES).
Without reaching those extremes, living in a city like Stockholm, where nowadays there is no total darkness at any time, “it influences a lot of sleep.” The expert insists that “having light at night is not natural” and in the case of people who want to sleep with light, the doctor “recommends” a yellow or reddish, weak and indirect thing that the biological clock does not disrupt. ” In any case, he is on it: “Total darkness is the best because, even if we have closed eyes, when there is light, the rhythms are changed because the body notices that there is a light intensity in it.”
– But how to sleep if it is not pulled?
– You have to strengthen the closed windows at night, use mask … sleeping with light is counterproductive, even if it is little that comes in. There are even studies that say that he falls asleep with a full moon, precisely because of that glow.
If the sun does not hide within 24 hours
The earth takes a full twist to itself every 24 hours (rotation movement, which generates the day and night) and at the same time runs every time the sun (translation), a return that takes 365 days to complete and that is responsible for the stations. At the end of March and September the duration of the day is the same as that of the night (12 hours), but in the summer the North Pole is inclined to the Star King and that is why the summer solstice is visible 24 hours a day. The opposite phenomenon is the polar night and the sun is not seen in all those hours.
