Vitamin D is an essential nutrient and there is no better source of it than direct exposure to natural sunlight. Yes, you can get it from vitamins and foods, but sunlight is the only way we can get the right amount that our bodies need to be healthy. So while it’s true that getting sunburns too often isn’t good for you, avoiding the sun altogether is a very bad idea.
But this is exactly what many of us have been doing for years, decades even. We avoid the sun and slather ourselves in sunblock every time we expect to be exposed to the sun. And sunblock is another source of health problems like- you guessed it- increased risk of melanoma and other types of cancer.
Vitamin D is produced by exposure of the skin to the sun. Sunblock and sunscreen prevent contact of sunlight with the skin. Part of the job of vitamin D is to boost our ability to resist cancer. By blocking out our body’s ability to absorb it- we’re depriving ourselves of one of our best defenses against cancer.
The type of vitamin D produced by the skin is the purest, most complete vitamin D you can get. So putting on sunblock prevents your body from naturally producing high-quality vitamin D.
If you wanted to come up with a scam to deprive people of vitamin D and increase rates of skin cancer, you couldn’t do better than to tell people to avoid sunlight.
According to the CDC, skin cancer rates have doubled since 1997. At the same time, the rates at which people are using sunscreen and sunblock have also doubled. Okay, correlation is not causation. So the question is, are the increased rates of skin cancer directly related to the increased rates of sunblock use?
A 2004 study published in the Lancet demonstrated that people who work indoors are two times as likely to get skin cancer than those who work outdoors. The authors write, “Paradoxically, outdoor workers have a decreased risk of melanoma compared with indoor workers, suggesting that chronic sunlight exposure can have a protective effect.”
What’s more, the evidence that sunblock actually causes cancer has been building for some time. These products have a slew of chemicals that are known to stress the liver with their toxic effects.
The most prevalent toxin in sunblock is octyl methoxycinnamate (OMC). This substance has been found to kill mammal cells at low doses.
Another common ingredient in sunblock it titanium dioxide. Sounds healthy, doesn’t it? The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has names it “an occupational carcinogen.”
A third common ingredient is Oxybenzone. This happy little chemical becomes a cancer-causing agent when exposed to sunlight! The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has recognized the substance as a common hazard for factory workers and advocates for the removal of it from work environments. Still, this garbage is put directly into stuff that people rub on their skin. Brilliant.
Vitamin A derivatives like retinol and retinyl palmitate have also been found to become toxic when exposed to sunlight. These are another standard ingredient of sunblock.
Finally, we have Diisopropyl adipate. This substance has been shown to trigger tumor growth in lab animals. Yet it remains a standard ingredient in sunblock.
So, that’s a pretty damning litany of carcinogenic nastiness. These are the chemicals that we are using to stop our skin from producing vitamin D. But wait, there’s one more thing. When chemicals used in sunblock are exposed to chlorinated water, yet another reaction takes place which transforms them into carcinogens.
If you could manufacture a better cancer-causing, vitamin D blocking substance- it would be considered a chemical weapon. But because the harm done is subtle- we ignore it. And sunblock stays on supermarket shelves.
Vitamin D enables the body to absorb calcium properly. This is necessary for the maintenance of strong and healthy bones. Vitamin D also plays important roles in muscle function, brain development, and the immune system. Being deficient in this vital nutrient is associated with aching joints, depressed mood, and digestive problems.
In children, vitamin D deficiency can cause bone deformities. In adults, low levels of vitamin D can make the discs of the spine more susceptible to fracture leading to serious and debilitating injuries.
Too much vitamin D isn’t good either and can result in calcium deposits in the kidneys. It’s important to get your vitamin D levels right. Overdosing on supplements is a mistake. The best way to get the right amount is to spend an hour a day in the sunshine and lay off the sunblock.
