The Benefits of Sunlight, About Vitamin D and The Importance of Sun Exposure
As a globe we have become Vitamin D deficient because we’ve been taught to fear the sun. I would say that that’s been the worst public health advice of the past 30 years.
Dr. Northrup
Nowadays all I hear is “protect yourself from the sun!”. Sunscreens, sunblocks, sun creams… I was born and raised in an island til I left at the age of 21 and I don’t remember the general panic regarding the sun rays and damage to your health that I constantly hear about nowadays.
I usually keep quiet about it because I don’t want to cause commotion within the skincare community but I must say I was happy to hear Susan M. Parker say in this podcast something along the same lines (she remember it wasn’t as obsessive regarding sunblocks and being careful with sun rays when she was younger).
While listening to Eckhart Tolle and Wayne Dyer in a video here, Wayne mentions Christiane Northrup (a most interesting thing on how when we cultivate our own produce it gives us what we need for OUR particular health, topic for another post!). I had to check this out and found a FANTASTIC video on the benefits of the sun by Dr. Northrup.
Dr. Northrup on The Benefits of The Sun
Please watch the video. It’s comprehensive in how the sun benefits us. I need to come back to this again and again so I’m going to list the benefits below for easy access. I use my own website to xx the research I do as well as compile information as I learn so I can come back to it anytime. This is one of those posts : )
According to Dr. Northrup we all need sunlight.
Humans have evolved for millions of years under the warmth and the light of the sun.
Dr. Northrup
She says you need natural light to create radiant health and the sun holds some healing power we need to take advantage of.
Why Avoiding the Sun Can Be Detrimental to Health
Check out this quote taken from the National Center for Biotechnology Information, written by Jörg Reichrath and Bernd Nürnberg:
The important take home message for dermatologists and other clinicians is, that health campaigns promoting strict sun protection procedures to prevent skin cancer may induce the severe health risk of vitamin D-deficiency.
Source
Vitamin D is synthesised by exposure to the sun, that’s why we all need the sunlight in order to produce Vitamin D. According to Dr. Northrup, “as a globe we have become Vitamin D deficient because we’ve been taught to fear the sun. I would say that’s been the worst public health advice of the past 30 years”. This is a pretty strong statement and I’d like to highlight the reasons why below according to Dr. Northrup:
- Getting natural light helps prevent heart disease (and we’re 100 times more likely to die from heart disease than from skin cancer according to Dr. Northrup).
- We’ve been told in the medical literature that avoiding the sun is as detrimental to health as smoking.
The Benefits of Vitamin D
Vitamin D is essential for a lot of functions according to Dr. Northrup:
- It promotes bone strength
- Regulates and supports our immune system
- Suppresses inflammation
- It protects against cancer, including melanoma
- It protects against dementia and brain ageing
- It decreases symptoms of asthma
- It supports cardiovascular health
- Regulates calcium in the blood
- Sunlight on skin regulates and transports the hormones in the middle layer of the skin
- It may support fat loss
How Much Vitamin D do We Need?
- Blood levels should be above 30 nanograms / per ml, optimally 45 nanograms or higher.
- To reach optimal levels of Vitamin D and to maintain them it generally takes 5,000 International Units (IU) a day of Vitamin D.
Vitamin D in Food
You can get Vitamin D from your food. Here’s a few examples according to Dr. Northrup:
- 3.5 ounces of wild red sockeye salmon contains over 600 IU of Vitamin D.
- 1tsp of cod liver oil 1,360 IU of Vitamin D
- Herrings, sardines and tuna are loaded with Vitamin D
- Egg yokes: 50 IU per egg
Have your levels checked and talk to your doctor or dermatologist to see if you need to adjust your diet accordingly. Remember to always buy ocean grown fish (not farmed), extra virgin oils, grass raised chickens, etc. Be fussy!
General Benefits of Sunlight
- Allows for better sleep (the sleep-wake cycle is contingent on morning sunlight which helps the body clock restart. The less morning light, the more difficult it is to fall asleep and wake up at the time we want to)
- Sunlight enhances our mood as it naturally increases our serotonin levels (the feel-good hormones) which helps avoid the ‘winter blues‘ or SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder)
- Sunlight lowers blood pressure because it increases nitric oxide (skin exposed to ultra-violet rays increase nitric oxide)
Which Are the Best Sunlight Rays?
The best rays are the UVB rays. Because UVA go deeper they can cause the more free-radical problems (i.e. ageing skin).
The best time to get the UVB rays is between 10am and 2pm. Dr. Northrup suggests starting with 5 to 20 minutes daily without sunscreen, depending on skin tone, and then building up gradually from there.
She says full spectrum light is really helpful – UV light is one frequency but there are 8 more frequencies infrared spectrums. There are 7 spectrums of visible light in sunlight, each one with its own unique power (she gives the example of natural light through a prism, which gives us the ‘rainbow effect’. Really amazing to see the spectrums this way. Check out these images). Dr. Northrup says we need each of those.
What About Sunscreen? Don’t We Need it?
She says for prolonged periods of time in the sun then it would be a good idea to use the sunscreen. She says to get some rays into the body and then put on the sunscreen.
She says sunblocking minerals such as zinc oxide and titanium oxide are stable in sunlight and don’t contain harmful additives.
Other alternatives: sunblocking clothes and getting in the shade.
I’ve seen people bjild bone mass just from getting more sunlight, even if they were already on supplements.
Dr. Northrup
Recap
Try to expose your body as much as possible when you can but only for 5, 10, 15 minutes and then put on clothing or wear sunscreen.
Final Thoughts from Me
Living in Tenerife I have to be very careful in the summer because if I don’t put on sunscreen BEFORE I leave home (when going to the beach that is) it is most probable that I end up with a terrible burn. I have to be very careful, but, I most definitely will take her advice on board. I’m already planning walking early in the mornings to catch some of those healing rays and then in the early evening as and when possible. Midday, depending on the season, I have to be careful. I’m not so worried about long term, but more about the fact that I can get really burn on those hot summer days.
On a last note just wanted to add that I’m really interested lately in butters and carrier oils in terms of SPF. I need to build a chart to have at hand, my idea is to create blends that can be effective in terms of sun protection without a complete blockage in a way that I can feel safe and protected.
Resources
– A great resource on Vitamin D: grassrootshealth.net
– Fantastic article by Dr. Steven Lin on Vitamin D
– Optimising your Vitamin D Through Sunlight (Dr. Steven Lin)
Vitamin D and the ‘Winter Blues’
– Sun Exposure and Its Effects on Human Health: Mechanisms through Which Sun Exposure Could Reduce the Risk of Developing Obesity and Cardiometabolic Dysfunction. Here’s a quote from the page: “You may have read in the news that this study showed that neither vitamin D nor omega-3s prevent cancer (all kinds of cancer analyzed together) or heart disease (a composite of all types). However, when the separate types of heart disease or death from cancer were analyzed, there were 30 different very significant results.”
– Risk Reduction with Vitamin D and Omega-3: VITAL Trial Results (2018) which comes from this article, and I quote from the page: “Results from a case-control study, published in a paper by Cattaruzza et al., showed a clear decrease in melanoma risk as vitamin D levels increased.”
– Can Vitamin D Help Prevent Lung Cancer?
