Health In Motion

Unless you’ve been hiding in a closet for the past decade, you’ve probably heard the warnings: Stay out of the sun, cover up your skin and slather yourself with sunscreen.

Fear of skin cancer from excessive UV exposure is not an irrational one, since roughly some 1 million new cases are diagnosed every year in the United Sates. There are also plenty of warnings about how too much sun can cause premature aging or increase the risk of eye problems like cataracts or macular degeneration, which can lead to total blindness.

Yet over the past decade, many scientists studying cancer have come to the conclusion that the polar opposite of what we’ve been taught is true. Sunlight actually prevents cancer, while sunscreen may exasperate the problem and increase your chances of developing skin cancer and other pathological disorders. So while sales of sunscreen and products containing sunscreen have skyrocketed; the incidence of skin cancer in the U.S. has tripled in recent years.

Worldwide, the greatest rise in melanoma has been experienced in countries where chemical sunscreens have been heavily promoted. The American Cancer Society estimates that the mortality rate from melanoma has increased 50% since 1973 and nearly 8,000 Americans die of the disease every year. [1]

Many scientists are now unsure whether sunscreen prevents against melanoma, the deadliest type of skin cancer which accounts for more than 75 percent of skin cancer deaths. Sunscreens are designed to absorb energy from ultraviolet light; however the energy may be transferred to the DNA in skin cells, which could cause problems. [2]

There is also a train of thought which states that these unwanted effects only appear in individuals who suffer from nutritional deficiencies, especially with antioxidants. A lack of eye-protecting antioxidants such as those found in berries (like vitamin C, anthocyanins, etc.) allows UV rays to do harm in ways that would normally not occur in a healthy individual. Thus, the “harm” from UV rays is primarily caused by malnutrition, not simply by exposure to UV rays. [3]

Malnutrition as a cause is not an irrational train of thought, since the promotion of sunscreen and the rise of illness from junk foods and refined foods have coincided over roughly the same time period.

How does sunscreen harm us?

Sunscreen actually promotes cancer by blocking your body’s absorption of ultraviolet radiation, and therefore blocking the production of vitamin D in your skin. This of great importance because studies have shown that vitamin D can prevent many cancers.

Yet for decades, cosmetic companies and some dermatologists have strongly advocated that chemical sunscreens should be heavily applied before any exposure to sunlight, despite of a lack of any adequate safety testing of these chemicals.

Chemical sunscreens have three primary defects:

1. Many of the ingredients found in commercial sold sunscreens actually contain free radical generating properties which increase cellular damage and changes that lead to cancer.
2. Their chemicals often have strong estrogenic activity which interferes with normal sexual development.
3. They are synthetic chemicals that are alien to the human body and accumulate in body fat stores. The human body is well adapted to detoxify biologicals, but it has great difficulty removing man made non-biological compounds such DDT, Dioxin, PCBs, and chemical sunscreens. [4]

It’s not wise to scoff at such assertions. A study in the April 2004 Journal of Chromatography found that there is significant penetration of all sunscreen agents into the skin, and oxybenzone and metabolites across the skin. [5]

The safety of these chemicals is controversial at best. For 29 years, the FDA has refused to publish safety standards for sunscreen products. That’s nearly three decades of Americans being exposed to extremely harmful, cancer-causing chemicals found in sunscreen products. [6]

As well, a team of researchers from the University of California found that three commonly used ultraviolet (UV) filters in sunscreen — octylmethoxycinnamate, benzophenone 3 and octocrylene — eventually soak into the deeper layers of the skin after application, leaving the top skin layers vulnerable to sun damage.

UV rays absorbed by the skin can generate harmful compounds called reactive oxygen species (ROS), which can cause skin cancer. Once the filters soak into the lower layers of skin, they react with UV light to create more damaging ROS. Apparently, this research is the first to indicate that sunscreen filters become damaging when they are soaked into the skin and another layer of sunscreen is not applied. [7]

Sunscreen and Vitamin D

Another major problem with sunscreen is that it blocks your skin’s ability to make vitamin D by more than 95 percent. [8]

Vitamin D, synthesized in your skin after exposure to UV-B light, has a number of documented anti-cancer effects, including inhibiting cancer cell growth and promoting normal cell cycle activity. [9-11]

So vitamin D is likely protective against melanoma. Remember, too, that sunscreens block UV-B but not UV-A rays, which will also block vitamin D production in the skin. This may be a deadly double whammy: no synthesis of protective vitamin D in the skin, yet exposure to the deeply penetrating UV-A rays. [12]

Epidemiological studies further suggest that sunlight exposure is associated with a decreased risk of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer of the lymph glands. [13]

The list if the sun’s protective properties are endless and cannot all be listed here. In humans, vitamin D (cholecalciferol) is critically important for the development, growth, and maintenance of a healthy body, from birth until death.

I have included a listing of research abstracts showing an increasing number of links between lack of sunshine and problems of the immune, nervous and endocrine systems from theVitamin D Council. It stresses that “hormones of the endocrine system, such as vitamin D, help the immune and nervous systems defend the body, with defects in this intricate system leading to autoimmune disorders.”

The bottom line is: please avoid getting sucked into the hype that sunlight is dangerous. Evidence is rapidly stacking up that the very opposite is true. Certainly, for those who adhere to a natural lifestyle, spending time outdoors (without sunscreen) has always been an essential and intuitive component of living as naturally and healthfully as possible. Of course, intuition is neither scientific nor accepted. But it should make us all wonder why those who practice it live longer and healthier.

Sources:

1. www.cancer.org – What Are the Key Statistics for Melanoma? March 27, 2006.
2. The Baltimore Sun July 14, 2003
3. NewsTarget.com, June 15, 2007
4. The Chemical Sunscreen Health Disaster – www.skinbiology.com.
5. Trash Your Sunscreen and Other Summer Sun Tips – www.mercola.com
6. Sunscreen Summary: What Works and What’s Safe – www.cosmeticsdatabase.com
7. Sunscreen Found to Generate Harmful Compounds that Promote Skin Cancer – www.newstarget.com.
8. Berwick M, Armstrong BK, Ben-Porat L, et al. Sun Exposure and Mortality from Melanoma. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2005 Feb 2;97(3):195-9
9. Kawa S, Nikaido T, Aoki Y, et al. Vitamin D analogues up-regulate p21 and p27 during growth inhibition of pancreatic cancer cell lines. Br J Cancer. 1997;76(7):884-9.
10. Verlinden L, Verstuyf A, Convents R, et al. Action of 1,25(OH)2D3 on the cell cycle genes, cyclin D1, p21 and p27 in MCF-7 cells. Mol Cell Endocrinol. 1998 Jul 25;142(1-2):57-65.
11. Liu M, Lee MH, Cohen M, Bommakanti M, Freedman LP. Transcriptional activation of the Cdk inhibitor p21 by vitamin D3 leads to the induced differentiation of the myelomonocytic cell line U937. Genes Dev. 1996 Jan 15;10(2):142-53.
12. Life Extension Magazine – The Sunscreen Paradox Popular Misconceptions About Skin Cancer Prevention – June 2006.
13. Smedby KE, Hjalgrim H, Melbye M, et al. Ultraviolet Radiation Exposure and Risk of Malignant Lymphomas. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2005 Feb 2;97(3):199-209.