Everyone's Free (Not) To Wear Sunscreen

“Trust me on the sunscreen.”

 Mary Schmich

When I was a kid… 

We played outside all day.  It was sunny and hot.  We’d never heard of sunscreen.  We never wore hats.  No-one I knew was fat.  Or ill.  We had boundless energy.  I never got ill.  I had no time off school.

Now I never see the sun.  I get ill every winter.  I’m a bit fat.  I don’t have boundless energy anymore. 

What happened?

Age?

Too many responsibilities?

As I come to my thirtieth birthday (ahem), I’m starting to compare and contrast what life was like in 1988 compared to 2013.

Back then the sun shone high and bright through the trees.  Now if I see it at all, it is glimpsed briefly behind polarised sunglasses.

Bring me sunshine...

I spend hardly any time in the sun.  If I do, I wear sunblock.  And I smother my daughter with it too.

Yet, how did we survive all these thousands of years without this protection? 

What happens when the sun hits our skin?

Why would evolution design skin that would burn easily and threaten cancer?  How is that adaptive to our environment?  Surely it would adapt a system that would naturally protect itself from exposure to the sun.  And since all energy comes from the sun, it might even adapt a method for gaining strength, muscle, mental acuity and a better mood from being bathed by its rays.

Well, funnily enough…

What if everything we’ve been told is wrong?

I stumbled across a book on Amazon called

THE MIRACULOUS RESULTS OF EXTREMELY HIGH DOSES OF THE SUNSHINE HORMONE VITAMIN D3 MY EXPERIMENT WITH HUGE DOSES OF D3 FROM 25,000 to 50,000 to 100,000 IU A Day OVER A 1 YEAR PERIOD [Kindle Edition]

Now you can tell this guy is crazy.  It's clear, because he’s used capital letters throughout his title and it’s an eBook, so it’s not been vetted.  But, just from the title, I wondered what he was on about.

I’d never even heard of Vitamin D.  So googling it to learn more, I stumbled on a video by Dr Michael Holick, an expert on Vitamin D and its effects.  It’s fair to say I think, that he’s a little obsessed.  In a 45 minute video, he explains what vitamin D is and what effect a deficiency has and its possible, but likely causations of most common health problems we suffer from today.

In the video, Holick explains

Current situation with sunblock:  Dermatologists have encouraged us strongly to not allow our skin to be exposed to the sun – at all! 

Vitamin D – a hormone that is made naturally by the skin when we are in sunlight.  It has many benefits, but whenever I read a long list of ‘benefits’ my eye skips over them, so I bet yours would too!  However, just imagine how you feel on a hot summer’s day, without a cloud in the sky and the temperature just right.  Why do you feel good on those days?

Evolution – why do those who live in northern latitudes have white skin?  Because evolution had to adapt to the fact that we got no sun in the winter.  In fact, studies have shown that the body produces no vitamin D from October to April at all!  If white people were dark skinned they would produce next to none vitamin D, even in the summer months.

Equator – people on the equator get plenty of sun all year round and their skin colour reflects that.

Benefits of Vitamin D – strengthens bones, muscles, mind, lifts mood, but actually reduces risk of most cancers (maybe the cause of cancers is a lack of vitamin D in the first place??), reduces risk of diabetes, MS and improves skin.

Mood – sunshine vitamin D makes you feel like it’s a sunny day – even when it’s not.

Skin – since taking vitamin D, my skin has improved immensely.

Energy – better mood, more energy.

How to get it

-       Sun

-       Light (sunbeds and iguana lamps)

-       Supplements

How much to take:

2000 iu minimum a day

And the Sun produces 20000 iu in 20 minutes

The book above details experiments with high doses of vitamin D and although probably over the top, there is no evidence of toxicity from vitamin D.  My personal feeling is that 2000 iu is too low, especially if you’re deficient.  You need sun!

In the book he also discusses Vitamin K1 and K2…

Vitamin D has the benefit of helping bones.  It does this by helping the body to process calcium better.  BUT the body then dumps calcium everywhere, including arteries.  To prevent this, take vitamin K1 and K2, which makes the calcium go to your bones to strengthen them.

As I was researching this blog, this came on the news:

Kids At Risk Of Rickets Due To Lack Of Vitamin D

14^th December 2012

2012!  Not 1912.  Kids aren’t playing outside.  When they do, they get sunscreen slapped on them.  So the UVB rays they need are being blocked (ironically, some say that sunscreen lets in UVA which is actually the damaging stuff).  Plus, they’re told not to go out at noon.  But outside of the hours of 10am-3pm, most rays are UVA again, so they’re more damaging.

Dermatologists have also realised that most, if not all melanomas do not form in places that have sun incident on them!  Mysteriously, they are not caused by incident sunshine.  They’ve been wrong.

There is anecdotal evidence too.  A phenomenon called Seasonal Affective Disorder has arisen, where people in the winter feel down.  Lack of Vitamin D.  A friend of mine who plays table tennis noted that in the summer his win rate is 70%, but in the winter drops to 40%. Lack of Vitamin D!  It is generally understood that work productivity drops in the winter...you guessed it, lack of Vitamin D!  And why are 'winter sun' holidays so popular and why do they sound SO tantalising!!

Do your own research.  But I’m taking vitamin D and getting more sun in any way I can!  That means:

Supplements

Sun beds

Iguana lamp (yes really, in my sitting room)

Winter holiday to African coast

Time to be a mad dog or an Englishman, and go out in the mid-day sun.