Dear Reader,
Summer’s here. Along with picnics, barbecues and boating, you’re going to get an earful from the $5-billion-a-year sun lotion industry about the sun’s “dangers.”
When my dad didn’t trust what someone was telling him, he’d say, “You sound like a manure salesman with a mouth full of samples.”
Here’s my suggestion: Ignore them and just use your common sense. The dangers of sunlight and the newly created need for sunscreen are full of hype and hidden agendas.
And they won’t tell you the evidence like this: A recent study published by the conservative British medical journal Lancet found that sunscreen does nothing to protect you from melanoma, the most fatal kind of skin cancer.
And another thing that the industry won’t tell you: chemical sunscreens contain as many as five known carcinogens, two of which are actually activated by the sun! And anything above an SPF of 8 blocks your vitamin D production by more than 95%. And that’s bad news…
The fact is that despite the industry’s scare tactics, sunlight is not only good for you – your body needs it. Another shocking fact you won’t hear: Vitamin D is one of your best defenses against cancer.
Sunlight enables your body to produce vitamin D in high quantity. And the benefits derived from vitamin D are enormous. Here’s a short list of what vitamin D from sunlight can really do for you:
• Elevate your mood and boost your mental performance.
• Prevent many types of cancers including prostate, breast and ovarian.
• Reduce your risk of melanoma, the deadly form of skin cancer.
• Prevent and treat the bone diseases of rickets, osteomalacia and osteoporosis.
• Prevent depression and schizophrenia.
• Enhance the function of your pancreas.
• Increase insulin sensitivity and prevent diabetes.
• Help you lose weight.
• Make you sleep better.
• Give you more energy and stamina during the day.
• Significantly lower elevated blood pressure.
• Lower abnormally high blood sugar.
• Decrease bad cholesterol in your blood.
• Increase lymphocytic white blood cells responsible for immunity.
Think about it: Our natural environment is the outdoors. Since the beginning of humankind until recently we have lived and worked outdoors in harmony with the sun. The move from outdoor to indoor living began with the invention of the light bulb in 1879. It was soon after that that cancer, heart disease, and other degenerative diseases that our ancestors never experienced became common.
Today, less than 10% of the US population works outside. This and a lack of cancer fighting nutrients and the constant exposure to carcinogenic chemicals account for the rise in sun-related skin cancers. And smearing on more sunscreen isn’t the answer.
That why I wrote my latest book. You can easily use effective, natural ways to protect yourself from sun damage yet enjoy its health effects.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD