Juergen,

Excellent!  Thank you for posting this.  I have intuitively known and 
experienced that I do much better (health wise) with regular, moderate 
sun exposure.

What do you think about the same exposure of our eyes to UV with or 
without UV-screening sunglasses?  Again, my intuition and personal 
experience tells me that regular, moderate exposure is healthy for my 
eyes (and being sensible about extremely bright situations, i.e., 
wearing a brimmed hat as a shield on some occasions).  What didn't seem 
to work well for me was regular use of UV sunglasses.  I'd be very 
interested in others' views on this.

Regards,

-=mark=-

Juergen Botz wrote:
> This is off-topic, but should be of interest to people on this
> list and I personally arrived at this line of thought through
> much the same reasoning that lead me to a quasi-paleolithic
> diet, so I feel that it makes sense to post it here...
>
> ~~~ Get your sunshine... or get sick and die.
>
>                                                 Juergen E. Botz 
>                                                  April 30, 2007
>                                         Arraial D'Ajuda, Brazil
>
> I've been saying it for years... something is very wrong with
> the anti-sunshine dogma we've been fed.  The sun is the source
> of all life on Earth, and we humans in particular spent a couple
> of million years evolving on the open plains of Africa.  But if
> you listen to the medical establishment today, you'd better not
> go outside without having every square centimeter of your body
> covered either with cloth or some expensive chemical sunscreen
> product.  If you don't listen you WILL suffer horrible
> disfigurement and eventual death from skin cancer.
>
> To me this dogma seemed perverse and suspicious at best, and 
> after doing a bit of research on the Internet I found that 
> it is on very shaky ground indeed.  For one thing, most skin
> cancers are relatively benign and the only deadly one, melanoma,
> is not actually proven to be linked to UV exposure.  For another,
> we keep hearing about increasing skin cancer rates, but it is
> obviously /not/ true that people are spending increasing amounts
> of time in the sun... in the contrary, today in any country with
> any amount of economic development, more people are spending 
> their days inside.  Finally, there has long been significant 
> evidence in the scientific literature that Vitamin-D, which is 
> produced in our skin by exposing it to the sun, is a very 
> powerful anti-oxidant and anti-cancer agent.
>
> It makes sense.  We evolved under the tropical sun of the
> African savanna, so if UV radiation can indeed harm us, we
> /must/ have a natural defense mechanism.  Vitamin-D is that
> defense.  Although this alone is not news, it has long been
> downplayed by the healthcare establishment.  But now new
> evidence is coming to light that not only is Vitamin-D a much
> more powerful anti-cancer agent than we had imagined, but many
> of our "diseases of civilization", such as multiple sclerosis,
> juvenile diabetes, osteoporosis, and even the flu, are strongly
> correlated to Vitamin-D deficiency.  An article reporting on
> this research has been published in the Globe and Mail (Canada)
> this weekend... you can read it here:
>
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070428.wxvitamin28/BNStory/specialScienceandHealth/home
>
> The bottom line is this: even if UV exposure /did/ increase your
> risk of deadly skin cancer (and there is little evidence for
> that) you'd still be much better off taking that risk in order
> to get more Vitamin-D from sun exposure.  The math is
> undeniable... using the statistics from the article, if you live
> in the USA your risk of dying of all cancers in a given year is
> %0.2, but your risk of dying of skin cancer only %0.0005
> percent.  If having adequate Vitamin-D from unprotected sun
> exposure reduces your general cancer risk by 60%, that means 
> your risk of dying from cancer would drop to below %0.1, so 
> even if your risk of dying of skin cancer doubled, quadrupled 
> or for that matter increased 100-fold, you'd still have 
> dramatically improved your life-expectancy by going out in 
> the sun.
>
> Yes, it's true that there is some statistical correlation
> between UV exposure and certain types of non-deadly skin
> cancers, namely carcinomas.  But even this data is of poor
> quality... as far as I could find in my research almost nothing
> has been done to distinguish between different sub-types of
> populations, regularity of sun exposure, etc.  It would seem
> reasonable to guess that many of the people who get a carcinoma
> from sun exposure are the ones who spend most of their life in
> artificially lit offices and then on their holiday spend a full
> week or two baking in the tropical sun, completely unprepared
> and still Vitamin-D deficient.  And conversely that people who 
> spend most of their life working half-naked in the fields of
> tropical countries are not suffering increasing skin-cancer 
> rates.  But try as I might, I could find no research examining
> this intuitive notion.
>
> If you're even half-way smart about it, I don't believe that
> skin cancer risk goes up at all from UV exposure... instead it
> probably goes down together with the other cancers.  Being smart
> about it means getting /regular/ sun exposure, being moderate
> about it whenever you haven't had any for a while, and keeping
> your skin from drying out... dry skin appears to be much more
> easily damaged, by the sun or otherwise.  Once you've built up
> your body's Vitamin-D supply and a bit of a tan, I suspect that
> statistically you are essentially invulnerable to the supposedly
> deadly rays.
>
> And avoid sunscreen at all costs... in fact, avoid all artificial
> "beauty products" if you can.  There is also some evidence
> emerging that some of the chemicals used to scent and preserve
> all sorts of commercial soaps and lotions (including of course
> sunscreens) interfere with cells's ability to prevent and repair
> damage... in other words, sunscreen might actually directly
> /cause/ more cancers than it prevents.  Use natural soap
> (Dr. Bronner's castile soap is my favorite) to wash and natural
> oil (pure coconut oil or un-roasted sesame oil are good) as a
> moisturizer... it's really all you need.  (Btw., the trick to
> oiling your skin is to do it in the shower with your skin wet
> and to just use a few drops of oil at a time...  this way you 
> can quickly cover your whole body with a layer of oil so fine 
> that you do not feel "oily" at all.  Try it, I'll bet you'll 
> soon like it better than any skin lotion.)
>
> So throw away your sunscreen and go fearless out into the sun... 
> being wise enough to prevent burning and heat-stroke by limiting
> your time in the direct sun and/or wearing appropriate clothing
> and a hat when you've had enough is all the protection you really 
> need.  Go out in the sun with as little clothing as the weather 
> allows as often as you can... your body will thank you for it 
> with better health and a longer life.
>
> ~~~
>
>