Sunscreen warning has it all wrong: people need more sunlight on their skin, not less

Tuesday, July 27, 2004 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: medical myths, sunscreen, vibrational nutrition

Canadians are being warned over the labeling used on sunscreen products, but these warnings have it all wrong. The warning that should be printed on sunscreen products is, "Warning -- you're not getting enough sun." The fact is, most people living in Canada, the UK, and even the United States suffer from a chronic deficiency in natural sunlight, and this lack of sunlight on their skin causes a great number of serious diseases, including depression, osteoporosis, schizophrenia, prostate cancer and even obesity. This is coming out now in new research published in the UK, and decades of misinformation about exposure to sunlight is finally being overturned in the medical industry. So, while health experts in Canada are complaining that sunscreens don't clearly explain the degree of protection they offer to users, the real issue here is that people need to be using a lot less sunscreen, and getting far more sunlight on their skin in the first place.

A good way to think about this is to think of the sun as providing something I call "vibrational nutrition." Sunlight is just like a nutrient that your body needs in order to function in a healthful way. It's not hard to understand why: the human species evolved in a natural environment where sunlight was readily available. Humans did not evolve under fluorescent lighting, nor in offices or industrial buildings. They evolved outside, under the sun, where they had frequent exposure to the healing rays of the sun. As a result, our bodies evolved ways to use that sunlight to support our health.

Exposure to sunlight, for example, creates Vitamin D in your body, and it is the deficiency of Vitamin D that is thought to be the primary cause of the chronic diseases I mentioned earlier. In other words, if you don't get enough sunlight on your skin on a regular basis, you are extremely likely to suffer from Vitamin D deficiencies that will inevitably result in chronic disease such as prostate cancer, depression, osteoporosis or obesity.

I find it somewhat amusing that our modern culture has become convinced that the sun is somehow evil. We flee from the sun and try to protect ourselves from its healing light by slathering on sunscreen and covering every inch of our bodies with thick clothing or hats. This is a completely irrational fear based on nothing but medical quackery and a desire to sell sunscreen. The sun is not only absolutely essential for human health, it is in fact the single provider of all life on planet earth. Without the sun, there would be no life -- no plants, no animals, no humans. So to consider the sun -- the source of all life -- to be something that's extremely dangerous to human health is utterly irrational.

This is not to say that you can't get sunburned if you aren't used to being under the sun, or if you follow the standard American diet that consists of processed foods, chemical additives, refined carbohydrates, soft drinks, and junk foods. Eating these foods alters your body chemistry, and makes you highly susceptible to sunburns. But by changing your diet -- removing processed foods, and adding superfoods and nutritional supplements into your diet -- you can become nearly immune to sunburns, and you will find that even if you had extremely pale skin before, you can now enjoy natural sunlight on your skin without getting burned, and without experiencing any increased risk of skin cancer.

None of this, by the way, would be supported by the makers of sunscreen, who, of course, want to propagate the myth that the sun is extremely dangerous simply because the more the general public believes that myth, the more sunscreen they will purchase. However, many sunscreens are themselves dangerous products, containing highly toxic ingredients. Many sunscreens contain artificial fragrance, and this fragrance has been shown to contain a variety of carcinogenic chemicals that are absorbed through the skin, enter the bloodstream, and then attack the function of the liver and other organs. Sunscreens are also made with petroleum products and preservatives that are simply not safe for use on human skin. That's because the skin absorbs these chemicals, and as a result, many chemicals you put on your skin end up in your bloodstream.

The bottom line is that it is the sunscreen products themselves that cause cancer, and it is natural sunlight that actually prevents cancer. Note that this is a complete opposite of the myths propagated by the sunscreen manufacturers, the medical industry, and the popular press.