The terror of sun exposure is a favorite topic pushed on us by our ever concerned medical establishment. Public health messages focus on the dangers of too much ultraviolet light radiation hitting our skin and causing genetic damage promoting skin cancers and accelerated aging of the skin. Yet curiously when the worldwide health damage caused by excessive sun exposure is calculated by the World Health Organization, the numbers only come up to 0.1% of the global burden of disease. On a planet-wide scale, sunlight is a non-issue.
On the other side of the coin, the global disease burden caused by not enough sunlight exposure is estimated to be 3.3 billion disability adjusted life years of damage. Simply put the disability and damage from too little sun is massively greater than the damage created from too much sun exposure. Lack of sun exposure promotes major musculoskeletal disorders, immune dysregulation, and promotes deadly cancers. Interestingly the biggest scare the public health agencies push is malignant melanoma which they say comes from too much sun. Yet the greatest incidence of this disease is in office workers who never go out in the sun – 700% higher.
One of the main benefits of sun exposure is the formation of vitamin D in the skin. Some researchers maintain that it is the sulfate form of vitamin D that is the biologically active agent, which is formed from D with the sunlight exposure. Vitamin D is actually misnamed because it is actually a hormone, not a vitamin. D is the main hormone for regulating our immune system. At least 1000 genes have been identified that are controlled by vitamin D. How much sun exposure it takes to form the D we need depends upon how much ultraviolet B radiation is able to penetrate down to the skin layer that turns cholesterol into vitamin D3. Skin pigments and surface fat diminish the UVB rays getting into the cells that make the vitamin D. As an example, white folks in swim suits will form about 50,000 IU in a half hour of summertime noonday sun. Tanned folks drop down to 20,000 to 30,000 IU and dark skinned people that drops down to 8000 to 10,000 IU in a half hour.
So what does time in the sun do for you?
The most commonly understood benefit to sun exposure is to prevent the bone softening disease rickets. This is caused by simply a lack of sunlight on the skin preventing the formation of vitamin D3. Vitamin D is essential for us to absorb calcium and phosphorus from our diet to make our bones from. By the 1800’s 90% of children in industrialized regions of Europe and North America had some level of rickets. Full body sun exposure for an hour three times a week would prevent this during the summer months. Other times of the year the sunlight is not strong enough to do the job in these northern latitudes. Back then the treatment was exposure to mercury arc lamps which gave off ultraviolet light.
Sunshine fights cancer. Although excess UV promotes basal and squamous cell skin cancer, it decreases many other types of cancer. Lymphoma, breast, prostate, ovarian, colon, pancreatic and many other cancers are all decreased in folks that get more sunshine. In fact just taking 2 to 4 times the recommended amount of vitamin D has been found to reduce the incidence of all cancers by 50% to 77%.
Autoimmune disease is another big area that the production of large amounts of vitamin D really helps. MS patients all show markedly low levels of D, and current studies now are showing the usefulness of D to mitigate the symptoms of MS. Diabetes type 1 similarly shows this sensitivity to not enough vitamin D from sun exposure. Giving babies 2000 IU of D per day their first year of life has an 80% decrease chance of developing type 1 diabetes. Psoriasis is another autoimmune disease that is greatly helped by sunbathing. Some studies have reported an 84% improvement in psoriasis lesions just from measured sun exposure.
Vitamin D lowers your blood pressure and protects your vessels from atherosclerosis. Besides vitamin D, sunlight striking the skin stimulates the release of nitric oxide from our blood vessel walls. Nitric oxide causes the vessel walls to relax and open up, allowing more blood flow and reducing blood pressure.
Natural sunlight has a lot more to it than just ultraviolet light for health. In the early hours of the day sunlight has a lot more of the blue part of the spectrum in it. This blue light stimulates the brain and wakes it up – part of the natural circadian rhythm of the body. This is why our normal sleep/wake cycle gets disrupted when we have these blue wavelengths enter our eyes later in the day from electronic light sources like computers and televisions. In a natural environment there would be no sources of blue light late in the day.
Sunlight also contains the deep red colors. These wavelengths actually stimulate a part of our energy production pathway in the electron transport chain called cytochrome C. We literally can generate energy from the sun just like plants in this way. It is not much energy, but it is important. Even deeper reds that are invisible to our eyes enter our body and produce heat. Warmth from the sun is an obvious need when we are cold, but heat from the sun the rest of the time is important for another reason – sweating. Sweating is a vital pathway our body uses to eliminate toxins from our system.
Sun exposure lifts mood, improves memory, and decreases symptoms in Alzheimer’s patients. Most of us are familiar with SAD – sunlight affect disorder. This type of depression is directly related to insufficient sunlight exposure. Here the full spectrum of light appears to be important for raising the levels of serotonin in the brain to relieve this condition.
Sunlight even makes you grow taller and stronger. Babies exposed to full sun in the first few months of life are well known to grow both taller and stronger, more robust. Even in utero babies are helped by exposing the mom to sunlight while pregnant. Pregnancy really depletes the mother of many nutrients including minerals and vitamin D, so regular sun exposure is recommended for pregnant moms.
I think you can get the message here – sun exposure is essential for your health. The equally important message is to get the amount of exposure that is right for your skin type. The lighter your skin, the less full sun exposure you need. You never want so much exposure that you get a sun burn, as that burn not only hurts now, but leaves damaged DNA to create problems many years down the road. To start, try only 5 to 10 minutes of sun exposure and slowly build up to ½ to 1 hour a day depending on your skin color. Sunlight is just like every nutrient the body uses. It has a balanced level that is needed. Both too much and too little are bad.
We have plenty of sun right now here in Sacramento, so take it in – free nutrition right out there in your back yard!