I craved the sunshine. Even a sunny day in the cold of winter was helpful to me. The sunshine of summer made me feel a whole lot better. I was like the poster child for seasonal affective disorder, or SAD as many know it by. That is where lack of daily exposure to sunshine makes you feel depressed, lacking energy and overall just plain awfully blah.
A few rainy days in a row brought it on, and winter was awful with its shorter days. I wanted the sun so bad that even the chance to wear designer sunglasses had me leaving them in my pocket more often than wearing them. I wondered about that, so I took a look into it.
Those who have SAD do better on bright sunny days. In the winter many of those who suffer from the disorder have a light panel they sit in front of that exposes them to bright light for a few hours every day. I saw that the average light therapy box was super bright, but nowhere near as bright as the amount of brightness one would be exposed to on a sunny day outside in the summer. That, to me, was why I did not want to wear sunglasses. I craved that bright light. Even a half hour or so of it made all the difference.
Now on the other hand I knew that too much UV light was bad, so I wore a hat. This is especially helpful on my nearly bald head. I did not go shirtless either. I had the redneck tan like so many other guys around here. However, I needed to protect my eyes. Looking back to the light therapy boxes, I discovered that the amount of UV light was kept to a minimum.
The goal was to just get bright light into the eyes of SAD sufferers, but still protect their eyes. So, I looked at different lens styles of designer sunglasses until I found a color of lens that let me enjoy the brilliance of the summer light without letting any UV light through. It just took some experimentation.