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Get your sunshine... or get sick and die

I just wanted to pass on an article from an ex-coworker. I have not done research on the subject but it is an interesting article and it could be true.

Tomacruz 10:58, 24 August 2007 (PHT)

Get your sunshine... or get sick and die.

Juergen E. Botz April 30, 2007 Arraial D'Ajuda, Brazil

I've been saying it for years... something is very wrong with the anti-sunshine dogma we've been fed. The sun is the source of all life on Earth, and we humans in particular spent a couple of million years evolving on the open plains of Africa. But if you listen to the medical establishment today, you'd better not go outside without having every square centimeter of your body covered either with cloth or some expensive chemical sunscreen product. If you don't listen you WILL suffer horrible disfigurement and eventual death from skin cancer.

To me this dogma seemed perverse and suspicious at best, and after doing a bit of research on the Internet I found that it is on very shaky ground indeed. For one thing, most skin cancers are relatively benign and the only deadly one, melanoma, is not actually proven to be linked to UV exposure. For another, we keep hearing about increasing skin cancer rates, but it is obviously /not/ true that people are spending increasing amounts of time in the sun... in the contrary, today in any country with any amount of economic development, more people are spending their days inside. Finally, there has long been significant evidence in the scientific literature that Vitamin-D, which is produced in our skin by exposing it to the sun, is a very powerful anti-oxidant and anti-cancer agent.

It makes sense. We evolved under the tropical sun of the African savanna, so if UV radiation can indeed harm us, we /must/ have a natural defense mechanism. Vitamin-D is that defense. Although this alone is not news, it has long been downplayed by the healthcare establishment. But now new evidence is coming to light that not only is Vitamin-D a much more powerful anti-cancer agent than we had imagined, but many of our "diseases of civilization", such as multiple sclerosis, juvenile diabetes, osteoporosis, and even the flu, are strongly correlated to Vitamin-D deficiency. An article reporting on this research has been published in the Globe and Mail (Canada) this weekend... you can read it here:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070428.wxvitamin28/BNStory/specialScienceandHealth/home

The bottom line is this: even if UV exposure /did/ increase your risk of deadly skin cancer (and there is little evidence for that) you'd still be much better off taking that risk in order to get more Vitamin-D from sun exposure. The math is undeniable... using the statistics from the article, if you live in the USA your risk of dying of all cancers in a given year is %0.2, but your risk of dying of skin cancer only %0.0005 percent. If having adequate Vitamin-D from unprotected sun exposure reduces your general cancer risk by 60%, that means your risk of dying from cancer would drop to below %0.1, so even if your risk of dying of skin cancer doubled, quadrupled or for that matter increased 100-fold, you'd still have dramatically improved your life-expectancy by going out in the sun.

Yes, it's true that there is some statistical correlation between UV exposure and certain types of non-deadly skin cancers, namely carcinomas. But even this data is of poor quality... as far as I could find in my research almost nothing has been done to distinguish between different sub-types of populations, regularity of sun exposure, etc. It would seem reasonable to guess that many of the people who get a carcinoma from sun exposure are the ones who spend most of their life in artificially lit offices and then on their holiday spend a full week or two baking in the tropical sun, completely unprepared and still Vitamin-D deficient. And conversely that people who spend most of their life working half-naked in the fields of tropical countries are not suffering increasing skin-cancer rates. But try as I might, I could find no research examining this intuitive notion.

If you're even half-way smart about it, I don't believe that skin cancer risk goes up at all from UV exposure... instead it probably goes down together with the other cancers. Being smart about it means getting /regular/ sun exposure, being moderate about it whenever you haven't had any for a while, and keeping your skin from drying out... dry skin appears to be much more easily damaged, by the sun or otherwise. Once you've built up your body's Vitamin-D supply and a bit of a tan, I suspect that statistically you are essentially invulnerable to the supposedly deadly rays.

And avoid sunscreen at all costs... in fact, avoid all artificial "beauty products" if you can. There is also some evidence emerging that some of the chemicals used to scent and preserve all sorts of commercial soaps and lotions (including of course sunscreens) interfere with cells's ability to prevent and repair damage... in other words, sunscreen might actually directly /cause/ more cancers than it prevents. Use natural soap (Dr. Bronner's castile soap is my favorite) to wash and natural oil (pure coconut oil or un-roasted sesame oil are good) as a moisturizer... it's really all you need. (Btw., the trick to oiling your skin is to do it in the shower with your skin wet and to just use a few drops of oil at a time... this way you can quickly cover your whole body with a layer of oil so fine that you do not feel "oily" at all. Try it, I'll bet you'll soon like it better than any skin lotion.)

So throw away your sunscreen and go fearless out into the sun... being wise enough to prevent burning and heat-stroke by limiting your time in the direct sun and/or wearing appropriate clothing and a hat when you've had enough is all the protection you really need. Go out in the sun with as little clothing as the weather allows as often as you can... your body will thank you for it with better health and a longer life.

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[p.s.: I sent this to a long list of friends and family because I thought it was important enough, and also because it was good excuse to restablish contact with some people who I haven't heard from in years. If you fall into that category, drop me a line!]