Welcome to The Rise. Your weekly dose of circadian sunshine and decentralised health wisdoms designed to empower you to be healthier, stronger, smarter and truly unstoppable.

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Much love and sunshine, ☀️

Sandy xx

Issue #123 • 7 June, 2026

🌅 Rise Report

The Hospital That Took ICU Patients Outside

Last week we covered heliotherapy – the forgotten science of using sunlight as medicine which was highly practiced from the late 1800s through to the 1930s. This week, we celebrate as King’s College Hospital in the UK brings heliotherapy back in 2026.

This week, King’s College Hospital in London opened the UK’s first outdoor critical care roof garden, allowing patients on full life support, ventilators, IV lines, monitoring equipment, to be safely cared for outside. The garden sits atop their 60-bed ICU and accommodates up to six beds at a time, each connected to a specially designed weatherproof cabinet housing power, data, and medical gas supplies.

“Now the patients can be taken outside and can just experience the blue sky, the weather changes, the trees that are planted around them, the plants, the scent. The rooftop area allows the patients to really experience shadow, light, some rain if they want to. They’re immersed in nature and in greenery and all those things that really give you peace and strength and which are ultimately incredibly healing.”

From this week, doctors will prescribe ‘fresh air therapy’ in the roof garden when they think it will be particularly beneficial or critical care patients can ask staff to take them outside. Some will be taken in their beds, while others will be able to walk or take a wheelchair, depending on the stage of their recovery.

The decentralised wisdom? Nature isn’t a luxury when you’re unwell – it’s scientifically proven medicine. If the sickest patients in the UK are being wheeled into sunlight and greenery, the rest of us have very little excuse to spend our days indoors and under fluorescent lights – whether we’re feeling well or not.

Is Your Gym Gear Shedding Plastic Into Your Body?

The tag on your leggings says “made from recycled polyester” and we all feel good inside. But what if turning plastic bottles into activewear wasn’t something to celebrate, but rather something to run from? Let’s find out.

An investigation by the Changing Markets Foundation in December 2025 tested clothing from Adidas, H&M, Nike, Shein, and Zara and found that recycled polyester releases 55% more microplastic particles per wash than virgin polyester, and the particles are nearly 20% smaller, making them more easily absorbed into the body and harder for waterways to filter out.

The reason? Recycled polyester is more brittle than virgin polyester. The recycling process weakens the fibres, meaning they break apart more readily with every wash. The fashion industry has been selling recycled synthetics as an environmental solution but the health science says otherwise.

Microplastics have now been detected in human blood, lungs, placentas, and breast milk and the health implications are not reassuring. And to make matters worse, sweat, exercise, and heat (the very conditions activewear is designed for) accelerate the absorption of microplastics through the skin.

The decentralised wisdom? Buying clothes made from recycled plastic is sold as the right thing to do – but right according to what? Our health? Perhaps not. And it goes further than your wardrobe. How many foods and drinks come in packaging made from recycled plastic? We’re not just absorbing microplastics, we may be eating them too. Choose natural fibres where you can (more on that below) and glass over plastic whenever possible.

The Toxic Truth About Fast Fashion

Price is never just price. And whilst we all like a good bargain, perhaps there’s a price we’re paying that doesn’t appear on the credit card statement.

In February 2026, a US Attorney General filed a lawsuit against fast-fashion giant Shein, alleging the company sold what court documents describe as “silent carriers of poison.” Independent lab testing by Greenpeace Germany found PFAS, otherwise known as “forever chemicals”, in Shein jackets at concentrations up to 3,300 times the EU safety limit, phthalates in children’s shoes at 428 times the legal threshold, and formaldehyde in children’s clothing. You can find the full “Shame on you, Shein”, report here.

Then in April 2026, the same Attorney General launched a formal investigation into Lululemon, an $11 billion brand that charges $180 for leggings and markets itself as a wellness and sustainability leader. The investigation examines whether Lululemon’s activewear contains PFAS and whether there is “the potential presence of certain synthetic materials and chemical compounds in their apparel that may be associated with endocrine disruption, infertility, cancer, and other health issues.”

These are two very different brands, however the same chemical and health concerns apply. Our skin is our largest organ and what touches it matters. PFAS are linked to certain cancers, reduced fertility, immune disruption, and hormonal dysregulation. They don’t break down in the body or the environment – they accumulate, hence the name forever.

The decentralised wisdom? Whether it’s $8 or $180, no price tag tells you what’s actually in the fabric. Becoming more discerning about the brands we support and the materials our clothes are made from may be our best form of defence.

PFAS Health Concerns: Image source: Professor Sarah Dunlop from the University of Western Australia  (Channel 9 News) 

🤓 Smarty Pants

Biophotons

We’ve all heard the poetic expressions: you light up the room…you’re glowing. And heck, even Debby Boone celebrated light with her 1970s “You light up my life”. But what if these weren’t just beautiful metaphors? What if there was actual biological truth to them at the cellular level? Well, there is.

Right now, every living cell in your body is emitting tiny flashes of light. They’re called biophotons, thousands of times fainter than a firefly, completely invisible to the naked eye, and very, very real.

German biophysicist Dr Fritz-Albert Popp first identified and named biophotons in the 1970s, spending decades demonstrating that living cells continuously emit light in the ultraviolet-to-visible spectrum. His research, replicated across nineteen institutions in thirteen countries, found this light isn’t random noise – it’s a sophisticated communication system.

Cells use biophotons to talk to each other, potentially faster and more efficiently than chemical signalling alone. The light is stored in your DNA and released in coherent, organised patterns that reflect the functional state of your body. Healthy cells and cancer cells emit measurably different biophoton signatures.

In 2025, Canadian researchers developed the world’s first technology to measure ultraweak biophoton emissions in mammals, finding that even after death, organs like the brain, eyes, and liver continue to glow faintly for up to an hour, each dimming at a different rate. Extraordinary and beautiful in equal measure.

Now, you know how some people are absolute mosquito magnets whilst others sit unbothered, out all night at the same barbecue and camp site? I’ve long wondered whether this had something to do with biophotons and that some people are simply giving off more light to the local mosquito community, silently yelling out, “I’m right here!”.

Whilst we don’t know the answer to that we do know this: biophoton emissions do reflect cellular health. Things like oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, and disease all alter the pattern and intensity of what your cells emit. Which means, the light your body gives off may one day become one of the most powerful, and non-invasive, diagnostic tools in medicine.

We are, quite literally, beings of light. And that’s not just poetry it’s biology.

Source Image: https://warrentonwellness.com/biophotons-the-human-body-emits-communicates-with-and-is-made-from-light/

☀️ Sandy’s Sunshine 

🔢 Number Crunch

19 million: A single square inch of your skin contains 19 million skin cells, 60,000 melanocytes, 1,000 nerve endings, and 20 blood vessels. One square inch — or for us metric southerners, just 6.5 square centimetres. So let’s protect every single one by putting our skin in contact with more natural fibres and less plastic.

“The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.”
– Voltaire (1694–1778)