Are fears of sunburns and skin cancer keeping you from the outdoors? Learn why the sun is actually VITAL to your overall health and how you can get back outside and enjoy the benefits!
Hello, hello! Dr. Jessica here. I wanted to kind of touch base because we’re getting into spring time, and then that leads to summertime, and that leads to all the myths about the sun. One of the things that we have been taught for several decades now is that the sun is very dangerous. We should never let it touch our skin at all.
I want to kind of take you back in history, and I want to let you know where that idea came from, and why there are myths that need to be dispelled. We go back to the ’70s, and that’s when government started to teach us how to eat nutritionally. We “found” that all fats were bad. They needed to be totally eliminated from the diet, not that there was a good fat and a bad fat. They just all needed to go.
Then you fast forward to the ’80s, and we started to see an incredibly high spike of skin cancer, sun damage, dark spots, things of that nature. Let’s just pause for a moment, so I can teach you a little bit about how the body works.
When the sun starts to beat down, your skin starts to develop vitamin D. For that to leave your skin, you have to have good fats in the bloodstream. They grab that Vitamin D and take it where it needs to go so that your body can produce hormones, your body can work on your immune system, and your body can repair its DNA, three pretty important things. But when we remove the fats, that D didn’t have any way to get out, so, yes, it did cause damage. Yes, it did cause some cancer-type situations.
But it wasn’t because of the sun. It was because we took out a nutritional component to our body. So then rather than correcting their mistake, they said coat your body with sunscreen. And some of the earlier sunscreens were horrendous; heavily toxic. So now, according to the EWG.org, we actually caused a lot of our own health problems because of the toxicity we were throwing onto the skin through the sunscreen.
What do we need to do? We need to use wisdom. If you’re heading out to the beach, especially if you live in the South, we all love to go to the beach. If you’re heading out to the beach, don’t go out at noon or have yourself heavily coated with sunscreen because you will burn. And we can all agree that burning your skin is bad.
There are some great sunscreens out there. I personally use Young Living’s sunscreen. Love it. If you happen to be at the beach and you’re stuck, and maybe you forgot it at home, Badgers makes an excellent sunscreen that can be bought at some of the local health food stores.
What else do we want to do day to day? Because we do want the sun touching us. We do want the health benefits from the vitamin D. Use your wisdom with this.
We’re going to go out early in the morning. We’re going to go out later in the afternoon. There’s some really great shirts now that are being made. But honestly, cotton works beautifully too. Cover yourself if you’re going to be out for extended periods of time so that the body can absorb what it needs, but we don’t get into crisis situations.
I hope this has been helpful to you. We do need the sun. The sun is good. Vitamindcouncil.org actually lists the 17 known cancers because our vitamin D levels are in the tank. Vitamin D is also directly related to mood and feelings of happiness and success. So, sun in small amounts, fantastic. Sun used wisely, perfect. Hope this has been helpful. Talk to you soon. Bye.
Here are some helpful links from products and resources mentioned in the video:
Vitamin D Council
Badger Damascus Rose Sunscreen
Badger Lavender Sunscreen
Young Living Sunscreen (SPF 10)
YL Sunscreen (SPF 50)
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