{"doi":"10.1002/oby.22852","title":"Walking in the Light: How History of Physical Activity, Sunlight, and Vitamin D Account for Body Fat—A UK Biobank Study","abstract":"OBJECTIVE: The high prevalence of vitamin D deficiency and obesity drives the need for successful strategies that elevate vitamin D levels, prevent adipogenesis, and stimulate lipolysis. This study provides a theoretical model to evaluate how physical activity (PA) and sunlight exposure influence serum vitamin D levels and regional adiposity. This study hypothesized a posteriori that sunlight is associated with undifferentiated visceral adiposity by increasing the ratio of brown to white adipose tissue. METHODS: Using 10-year longitudinal data, accelerometry, a sun-exposure questionnaire, and regional adiposity quantified by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry imaging, a structural-equation mediation model of growth curves was constructed with a data-driven methodology. RESULTS: Sunlight and PA conjointly increased serum vitamin D. Changes in vitamin D levels partially mediated how sunlight and PA impacted adiposity in visceral and subcutaneous regions within a subjective PA model. In an objective PA model, vitamin D was a mediator for subcutaneous regions only. Interestingly, sunlight was associated with less adiposity in subcutaneous regions but greater adiposity in visceral regions. CONCLUSIONS: Sunlight and PA may increase vitamin D levels. For the first time, this study characterizes a positive association between sunlight and visceral adiposity. Further investigation and experimentation are necessary to clarify the physiological role of sunlight exposure on adipose tissue.","journal":"Obesity","year":2020,"id":88282,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":10,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.962,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":447567,"name":"Nathan F. Meier","orcid":"0000-0002-1558-3427","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":447568,"name":"Brittany Larsen","orcid":"0000-0002-6088-5176","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":447569,"name":"Yueying Wang","orcid":"0000-0003-4861-2658","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":447570,"name":"Shan Yu","orcid":"0000-0002-4321-3108","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":302786,"name":"Jonathan P. Mochel","orcid":"0000-0002-0997-3111","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":448464,"name":"Scott T. Le","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":447571,"name":"Tovah Wolf","orcid":"0000-0001-8340-0226","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":447572,"name":"Amy Pollpeter","orcid":"0000-0001-5122-7174","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":447573,"name":"Colleen Pappas","orcid":"0000-0001-9140-3558","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":447574,"name":"Qian Wang","orcid":"0000-0003-4250-4744","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":302785,"name":"Karin Allenspach","orcid":"0000-0002-2168-5809","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":447575,"name":"Li Wang","orcid":"0000-0001-8432-9986","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":447576,"name":"Daniel W. Russell","orcid":"0000-0003-2264-861X","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":778,"name":"David A. Bennett","orcid":"0000-0003-3689-554X","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":447577,"name":"Auriel A. Willette","orcid":"0000-0001-5131-8199","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":447566,"name":"Brandon S. Klinedinst","orcid":"0000-0003-2697-1852","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":51,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T22:00:56.736935Z","pmid":"32573118","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}