An Irish professor has warned of a bizarre side effect of warm weather for men as Ireland's temperatures are set to soar to over 30C in places by next week.
Professor Luke O’Neill said that one unusual effect of the mini heatwave to watch out for is that the sun makes men more hungry.
The Trinity College Professor told Newstalk’s Pat Kenny today about the recent study of 3,000 people by researchers at Tel Aviv University and how they found sunshine doesn't have the same effect on women.
READ MORE: Highest temperature ever recorded in Ireland could be broken in days
"Sunshine is good for you - we know [that] anyway - but in men it stimulates the appetite," he said. "It's a strange finding in some ways. They noticed in the men, appetite was stimulated and ate a bit more food and put on bit more weight.
"The big question is 'why men versus women?' Oestrogen seems to stop this process for some reason and women have more oestrogen than men.
"They showed this was a real effect as they exposed mice to sunlight as well and in the male mice, appetite was stimulated and they went looking for more food, and female mice would have oestrogen.
"So more some reason it's only a feature of men, not women."
He said the study, published in the journal Nature Metabolism, found that 25 minutes of sunlight exposure a day, around midday, was sufficient for the 'hunger hormone' to be stimulated in men.
"A thing called ghrelin gets made - it's the hunger hormone - it goes up and makes you feel hungry," he said.
"Before a meal, ghrelin goes up and your brain says, 'go and get some food.' Sunlight was boosting ghrelin production in the skin of the men and it went into their circulation and then they began to feel hungry."
Professor O’Neill listed the other benefits of sunshine but warned of the risks of too much exposure that can lead to sunburn and skin cancer, saying that 10 to 20 minutes of direct sunlight is the ideal amount.
"Lots of studies have shown beneficial effects [of sunshine]," he said. "One is a decrease of blood pressure - very clear effect on that.
"And secondly it protects the heart, several studies over the years. So a bit of sunshine is good for the heart."
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