Image: iStock.

Well, it seems we’ve been undermining how much impact light, or lack thereof, has on our bodies.

Just last week, researchers discovered the amount of light exposure you get throughout the day plays a huge role in how well you sleep at night. However, a study released today suggests it’s not only the amount of light we encounter that affects us — it’s also the type of light.

RELATED: A piece of string can tell you if your weight is putting your health in danger.

So here’s the bad news: it seems too much artificial light could be linked to increased body fat.

Which sucks if you’re one of the many thousands of Aussies who spend their day and overtime hours under the fluorescent lights of an office, or who work shift hours in artificial light while the rest of the world sleeps. (Post continues after gallery.)

Positive celebrity quotes about diets.

Jennifer Lawrence

Jennifer Lawrence said to Us Weekly, "I like food. I don't really diet or anything. I'm miserable when I'm dieting and I like the way I look. I'm really sick of all these actresses looking like birds."

Beyonce

After losing weight for her role in Dreamgirls, Beyonce said to GMTV, ''The funnest part was putting the weight back on and eating my doughnuts and all the other things, so now I'm back to my body."

Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer Aniston said to Women's Health, "I went from being a crazy workout girl to sort of saying, 'My body wants a little bit a of break.' So I kind of stay with more simple stuff and taking walks and not being neurotic about working out and eating right. I started to enjoy life a little bit more."

Jennifer Lopez

Jennifer Lopez told Marie Claire, "I love to eat everything and you pretty much can a little piece of something fattening is not going to kill you."

Fergie

Fergie said to Marie Claire, "I have learned more and more to enjoy my body when I have a few extra pounds on, just being more voluptuous. I say, focus on the body part that you feel most comfortable about."

Khloe

Khloe Kardashian wrote on her Instagram, "We all have to start somewhere and doing something is better than nothing at all. Start small so you don't get discouraged and give up. Remember it is all about consistency."

Jennifer Hudson

Jennifer Hudson told Michigan Avenue, "For years, I felt like I could never have ice scream, but now I can eat ice cream occasionally!"

Kim Kardashian West

"For me, skinny is just a style of jeans...not a goal."

Adele

It's never been an issue for me - I don't want to go on a diet, I don't want to eat a Caesar salad with no dressing, why would I do that? I ain't got time for this, just be happy and don't be stupid."

Drew Barrymore

"I just think you should eat less of everything. A little bit less. I don't want to live a life where you can't have what you want; it just makes you want it more."

But here’s the (sort of) good news: this has only been established in tests involving mice, not human beings. For the time being, anyway.

In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, some mice were exposed to 16 or 24 hours of artificial light, while for comparison a control group was exposed to 12 hours of light and 12 of darkness.

After five weeks, the high exposure group had gained noticeably more body fat than the control group — 21 per cent more, to be precise — despite being fed the same food and sleeping for the same amount of time.

RELATED: Your personality could be making you gain weight.

According to the study’s co-leader Dr Patrick Rensen, the light exposure had affected the mice’s base metabolism, and more significantly, reduced the activity of their “brown fat”, also known as brown adipose tissue. During the test, the University of Leiden researchers had injected the mice with radioactively tagged fats to see how efficiently their bodies broke them down.

The biggest downside of all this? Artificial light is everywhere.

“As underlying mechanism we identified that brown fat, a tissue that combusts large amounts of fat into heat, becomes less active, resulting in reduced energy expenditure that leads to an increase in body fat,” he explained.

This could go some way in explaining why some humans store more fat than others, despite maintaining a healthy diet and lifestyle.

According to Healthline, the researchers speculate artificial light exposure effectively "tricks" an evolutionary function that allows the body to store fat during the sunny days of summer in preparation for the darkness of winter. Thus, being exposed to high levels of artificial light at night could confuse the body and make it alter its rate of fat burning.

http://cdn.theglow.com.au/app/uploads/2015/05/hair-social-image-copy.jpeg Hands up who'd love a little more natural light in their lives?

Forbes reports the team is hoping to examine the impact of light exposure on the workings of 'brown fat' in the human body using student volunteers, who will sleep in the lab under different amounts of light and have their body fat monitored.

RELATED: Yes, you can lose weight without dieting. This is how.

“Modern 24-hour economy necessitates for work at night and shifts of social activities to the dark period. Our observations may implicate, assuming the data could be extrapolated to humans, that the current obesity epidemic is at least partly be due to increased light pollution and subsequent reduced brown fat activity,” the authors write.

Looks like this is one to watch.

How much artificial light is present in your day-to-day life?

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