I love the sun, and heat. But taking my shirt off and getting lots of full-on sun even for just five or ten minutes makes me want to go inside and take a nap. That’s what I just did.
I almost never can nap during the day. Wish I could more often, but it just ain’t happening. Then a little time shirtless in full, hot sun and I’m overcome with a tired lethargy; gotta sleep!
Why?
If it’s hot at night, I can’t sleep, so it’s not just the heat. It seems to be exposure to the sun, then shade that triggers a sleep reflex, hot or not.
Do you also enjoy feasting on the blood of the living? Because if so I think I can diagnose what your problem is.
More seriously, usually when I hear people complain about the sun making them tired, they’re talking about a few hours of exposure wearing them out, like how people coming back from the beach are always wiped out even if all they did there was sit on a towel and read. I suppose due to some mixture of dehydration and sunburn. But I’ve never heard of anyone being exhausted by just a few minutes of exposure.
I won’t start a new thread but if it appears a factual answer isn’t forthcoming, I’m more than happy to have a mod move this to IMHO and treat it as a poll.
Here’s another piece of data. Sun in a car, even in the winter, makes my entire family drowsy. That is, when you’re sitting in a car and the sun is beating down. Probably especially in the winter - in the summer it’s too hot.
My educated guess is that this is a built in reaction by your body to conserve energy, focus on cooling and prevent dehydration. Survival-wise, it’s better to have a natural tendency to stay hydrated and rested than it is to have a natural tendency to want to run around, overheat, dehydrate in the sun and increase the chance of death.
Many years ago, I lived in an apartment right on the beach, in Long Beach, NY (on the southern shore of Long Island). I was working the graveyard shift in Manhattan, and was having a helluva time trying to sleep during the day in summer, what with the beach crowd’s noise and kids playing basketball next door. I discovered that if I went out to the beach, with lots of sunscreen, I could get at least a few hours of sleep, then come inside and go immediately to bed.
