Cardiometabolic Sunhealth

Sunlight, and in particular ultraviolet light, is essential for life, and has shaped the way organisms acquire energy and synthesize essential mediators like vitamin D. While we have evolved under the influence of sunlight, our lifestyles have dramatically changed in recent times, perhaps paradoxically contributing to the high prevalence of many 'westernised' disorders.

These include obesity and diabetes, diseases that are national health priorities. Indeed, one quarter of children are obese or overweight in Australia. The Cardiometabolic Sunhealth team is committed to better understanding the influence that sun exposure has on our health (both positive and negative) and its potential to be used as part of therapies or preventative strategies to reduce the health and economic burden of these 'lifestyle' diseases.

The team's research has identified that ongoing exposure to safe levels of sunlight could be used to treat or even prevent the development obesity and associated cardiometabolic disorders like type-2 diabetes. Safe sun exposure has the potential to improve the wellbeing of many overweight or obese children and adults, as an accessible, equitable, and inexpensive tool.

Team Highlights

1. We received funding from Healthway (Government of Western Australia: Gorman, Strickland, Lucas, Muir) for a new project called: Developing an online tool to promote safe sun behaviours in teenagers (the SunSafe Project). This project encompasses long-term translational goals of our team, whereby we hope to produce with young co-researchers an online tool, such as a smartphone app, which aims to improve the capacity of young people to make healthy and balanced decisions around sun protection and sun exposure.
2. Publication of an invited review in Photochemical and Photobiological Sciences, which highlights our contributions towards determining the role that exposure to ultraviolet light and vitamin D may have in preventing the development of obesity, metabolic syndrome and type-2 diabetes.
3. Publication of our findings on how ongoing exposure to low dose ultraviolet light prevented further weight gain and the worsening of metabolic dysfunction in mice fed a high fat diet in the Journal of Endocrinology.