Your skin isn’t the only part of your body that needs a regular dose of sunlight — your brain thrives on the stuff, too.

Just as your skin helps turn sunlight into vitamin D, your brain uses those same bright rays as a cue to produce serotonin, the neurotransmitter that helps you to feel happy and content.

Lack of sun is why most of us experience the winter blahs at some point — and for millions of people, it’s the direct cause of an annual battle with serious depression.

Now, a new gadget is promising to bring quick and lasting relief to people who suffer from that seasonal affective disorder — and it works by giving your brain the light it needs to get the serotonin factory producing at mid-summer levels.

The device looks like a set of the earbuds people use for listening to music — but instead of tiny speakers, these earbuds contain little flashlights with enough power to send a beam of light through the ears and straight into the brain.

Side note: I’m going to be more careful with Q-tips from now on.

Using light to beat SAD is not a new concept. Many people already get relief by staring at a light box. It works — but it’s a pain in the butt: It can take an hour a day, every day, or more to get some relief… and who has that kind of time these days?

That’s where the new technique really shines: In one clinical trial, nearly 80 percent of 89 SAD patients who used the earbud flashlights were completely cured with just 12 minutes of treatment a day, according to data presented at the recent International Forum for Mood and Anxiety Disorders in Budapest.

Just 12 minutes! If this holds up to further study, this won’t just be a breakthrough — it would revolutionize how we treat SAD.

The only drawback is the price. At around $300, it’s more expensive than a lightbox and even pricier than an iPod.

But since it’s every bit as portable as a music player, you can plug in on your way to the office and arrive at work each day singing a new — and happier — tune.

Despite what you’ve heard, the only protection from the sun your skin really needs is a little common sense.

That might sound positively self-destructive here in the age of sunscreen. I’ve even seen adults slap on a thick layer of the stuff before a two-minute walk across a parking lot.

But the truth is, those chemical-based skin creams can do a lot more harm than good — and a new study uncovers one more way they can hurt: They stop your skin from sensing and responding to sunlight.

Researchers have found that your skin is loaded with something called rhodopsin, the light receptor in your eyeballs that helps you to see in the dark. In your skin, however, it appears to play a much different role: It helps your body to “see” the UV rays of the sun.

And when it senses that sunlight, your body begins churning out melanin, a natural pigment that helps protect you from potentially damaging UV rays.

Scientists have always known the body can make its own melanin, of course — melanin is what gives you a tan in the summer.

But until now, they believed the process took days to unfold.

The new study shows that melanin production actually begins almost immediately thanks to those light receptors — or, at least, it would begin immediately under natural circumstances.

If you cover yourself in sunscreen, though, the light receptors never “see” the UV rays, and melanin production never begins.

That could ultimately leave your skin more exposed to potential damage than ever — and all because you didn’t want to walk across the parking lot without “protection” from the sun.

The researchers were quick to add that they hope their discovery will lead to new and better sunscreens — and that no one should use the study as an excuse to avoid wearing the stuff that’s out there now.

They’re partially right — because you don’t need to use this study as an excuse to avoid sunscreen.

There are plenty of other good reasons — starting with the fact that many of them contain a form of vitamin A that’s been proven by government scientists to help speed the growth of skin tumors.

Common sunscreens — even the ones with natural-sounding names — are also loaded with hormone-blocking chemicals and free radicals that can do more damage to your skin cells than sunlight ever will.

Believe me, you want nothing to do with this stuff.

Like I said earlier, the best protection is a little common sense: Seek shade before you get too much sun, or at least add a hat and a layer of clothes instead of a layer of chemicals.

One of the best things about enjoying the health benefits of red wine is the wine itself.

Being healthy has never tasted so good!

So naturally, some researchers are trying to spoil the party — because a new study looks at the benefits of the polyphenols in red wine… when taken without the actual wine.

I’m happy to report that the experiment was a failure.

Researchers gave 61 men and women with an average age of 61 one of three drinks for four weeks: A dairy beverage with a high dose of the polyphenols found in red wine… a dairy beverage with a lower dose of those same polyphenols… and a dairy beverage with no polyphenols.

After four weeks, there was no change in blood pressure levels. The patients were all hypertensive before… and remained so afterwards with average readings of 145/86.

But even the researchers must’ve expected that.

“Previous human studies showed no effect of red wine drinking on blood pressure,” researcher Ilse Botden, MD, a PhD student at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam told WebMD.

The researchers concluded that whatever the heart benefits of red wine might be, they don’t come from lowering blood pressure. Like I said, that’s no surprise — the real surprise is that they reached any conclusion at all about red wine… since no one in the study actually drank any.

The researchers were on the right track in one regard, however: Red wine isn’t actually the best source of some of its famous antioxidants. A single resveratrol supplement, for example, can contain as much of the polyphenol as an entire case of wine.

But take it WITH your wine, not instead of it — because studies have shown that booze itself holds some terrific benefits, no matter what kind of alcoholic beverage you drink. In fact, a moderate drinking habit can help your heart, lower your risk of stroke and may even extend your life… even if it won’t lower your BP.

And of course, booze is also great for the brain: One recent study found that moderate drinkers are 30 percent less likely to develop dementia and 40 percent less likely to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease than non-drinkers.

If you can get all that from drinking, why get it any other way?

The mainstream “solutions” to multiple sclerosis can be even worse than the disease itself: Of all the dangerous meds MS patients are told to take, not a single one of them can stop or reverse the damage.

And they all come with some horrific side effects.

One recently approved drug that does little more than boost walking speed — and only in about a third of MS patients — is actually a bird poison, for crying out loud.

Now, there’s finally some real promise on the horizon — and no… it’s not a drug. It’s a natural supplement that’s very similar to the glucosamine safely taken by millions of arthritis patients every single day.

It’s called N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc), and researchers say it can help correct the problems that cause the immune system to start attacking itself in MS patients.

The secret is in the sugars: Cellular proteins react to sugar molecules, and recent studies have shown that those sugars could be triggering the message that causes immune system T-cells to go haywire.

Glucosamine, as the name suggests, is also a form of sugar — and researchers say the N-acetylglucosamine form is powerful enough to change that message and replace it with a new one: Stop it. Now.

That’s the theory. To test it, the researchers bred mice with an MS-like condition that was causing leg weakness to the point where the rodents should have eventually suffered from paralysis.

When they were given N-acetylglucosamine, however, the march to paralysis wasn’t just stopped… it was reversed.

The researchers say human trials are needed to figure out if it really can deliver on the elusive promise of an MS cure or even relief, as well as key issues like the most effective dose.

But if you don’t want to wait, I can certainly understand — and you don’t have to, either: N-acetylglucosamine is inexpensive and already widely available. Just be sure to work with an experienced naturopathic physician who can help monitor your progress.

The benefits may not end with MS. In fact, N-acetylglucosamine could open the doorway to new treatments for a host of autoimmune disorders.

In one study, for example, eight of 12 kids suffering from inflammatory bowel disease saw significant improvements — and no serious side effects — after two years of N-acetylglucosamine supplements.

These were kids who had a treatment-resistant version of the disease — so once again, a simple natural supplement managed to pull off what a pharmacy full of meds could not.