Here are some interesting facts. White people usually love sunbathing, but also have the highest rates of skin cancer. On the other hand, Asian women often avoid sun to such a degree, that sometimes it leads to bone fractures.
Yet, according to Harvard Health, sun protection normally doesn't lead to weaker bones. Avoiding sun also makes you look younger.
Any ideas?
Personally I think the cancer is coming from the sunscreen lotion rather than the sun itself. As for the avoiding the sun preventing aging. Its possible, but I suspect it is more likely their genetics more than anything else.
ReplyDeleteGoing back to the cancer, I have two things that I would like to present for my argument. First this outbreak of cancer only started to show up within the last century. I am not saying cancer didn't occur, but it didn't on this level. Not to mention people (whites specifically in this case) spent a lot more time in the sun in the past. If the sun caused cancer, old medical records which we do have, would have recorded it as being a prevalent disease right next to stuff like the plague. But it is not there.
Second over the last twenty years, but especially the last ten years or so, we have seen a massive wave of conspiracy theories turn out to have actually been true. From CIA nonsense, to one I was listening to today, where the sugar industry apparently had paid a researcher working at (Harvard) to come to the conclusion that fat (meat) caused heart attacks. After said conclusion it took fifty years before someone found the letters by the conspirators ironically completely by accident when looking into the records for something else.
I will further note, that the USDA or whatever acronym published dietary advice for decades based entirely upon this study. And this was not the only Harvard study that we found out later on was paid for, nor the only bit of tampering done by various big industries.
So no, I have not used sunscreen lotion in over a decade now, and I will never touch the stuff again. I am not 100% convinced that it is one of the things giving you cancer, but it is a bet I am quite obviously willing to stake my life on.
- W
Exactly! I used to have this argument with a pharmacist girlfriend. Lite tan is okay. Not a sunburn! But people do need to sunlight to be healthier.
DeleteIt's a doubled edged sword here. I think humans need real sun exposure to produce vitamin D naturally which interacts with your body to strengthen bones and your immune system.
ReplyDeleteJoseph Mercola, an alternative health and diet promoter and a doctor I believe, has said that some of the burning and such is also the result of too much Omega 6 in the bodies compared to Omega 3's from consuming seed oils and too much processed food.
I myself in Texas do try to get a bit of sun exposure on the weekends and lite tan. So yes, it makes more freckles and such, but one's body also needs that sun exposure. Studies have also shown that there are more illnesses as one moves farther north partly because of a lack of Vitamin D.
Didn't sanatoriums for TB make late morning sun part of the treatment? I'd have to look it up.
We do spend way too much time indoors and too sedentary which negatively impacts our health.
This, "We do spend way too much time indoors and too sedentary which negatively impacts our health." is true. If I have a long weekend and I spend it inside, by the fourth day I have a raging headache which then suddenly mysteriously ups and vanishes if I go outside for call it 10 mins or so.
DeleteAs for the sunburn. Really I used to be more concerned with that, but frankly these days I am perfectly fine with them. I think it might be sort of like back a long time ago when kids used to run about barefoot in more rural areas. The soles of their feet grew harden and so while at first they might get scratches and the like, at some point short of actually stepping on a thorn most of it was simply ignored. I suspect a sunburn is the same way. If you only get one every couple of years of course its going to hurt. If you get two or three a year, by the second year a sunburn is no more than warm skin and that annoying pealing you have to deal with later on.
But that's just my opinion. Who really knows.
- W
Of course I also don't go to the beach between 11:30am and 4:00pm so take that into consideration too. I suspect most sunburns taken there and at that period of time are worse due to the concentration of the heat.
Delete- W
W, have you seen the way Europeans used to dress in the past? they were covered from head to toe. They used to wear wide brimmed hats, too. They never sunbathed nearly naked and neither did an average person somewhere from the North of England go on a vacation to Spain where they spent 2 weeks sitting on the beach the whole day.
ReplyDeleteSkin cancer rates in Europe started raising somewhere in the 1950s when these rather unsafe behaviours first became mainstream.
That said, personally I don't like sunscreen and prefer to cover myself with clothes and a hat instead of some chemical substance. I agree we need a bit of sun though. I think the Chinese go too far in this respect:)
As for your 2nd point, sugar doesn't cause heart attacks on its own and neither does meat. Western style eating patters which include too much sugar and too much saturated fat are unhealthy, and it has been proven beyond the reasonable doubt.
ReplyDelete