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Sunlight

The Greek sun god, Apollo was also the god of medicine.

The Big, Bad Sun

The sun has had such a bad press for so long now that we seem to have forgotten sunlight was once highly prized for it’s many health benefits. Although sunlight therapy was a popular treatment 100, even 50 years ago, a whole generation of us have now grown up thinking we must keep out of the sun and that we can only venture out safely if we’ve plastered our faces and bodies in high-factor (and expensive!) sunblocks and creams.

Thanks to 20 years of successful campaigning by orthodox health professionals, a tan, for most people, is no longer perceived as being something healthy, no matter how good it makes them feel. And sunbathing, which we have come to believe is an almost certain prelude to cancer, is seen as being almost as irresponsible as smoking.

In the Western world, 90% of the population now spends 90% of their time indoors, which means the only time most of us ever truly get to escape what can seem like a twilight existence and feel the warmth of the bright sun’s rays is when we strip off on holiday. Of course what happens the minute we hit the beach is that we forget all that sensible health educational advice, try and squeeze a year’s worth of exposure into two short weeks and end up, not surprisingly, roasted red, raw and burnt, which really is a health hazard.

There is no question that unprotected and unaccustomed exposure to intense sunlight like this will burn most skin types. Scientists are convinced this can trigger one of the fastest-growing and frightening of the killer cancers, malignant melanoma, and we should not ignore the risks. But we have all been so busy worrying about the harmful effects of the sun that it has not occurred to most of us to stop and ask why sunlight (or heliotherapy) played such an important role in medicine before antibiotics were commonplace, or whether we could still benefit from it now?

Why, for instance, were young mothers in the 1960s so anxious to park those enormous Mary Poppins-type perambulators outdoors so their baby could get plenty of fresh air and natural sunlight, and why, we should be asking, was a scientific review of the medical literature – which concluded that ‘the benefits of moderate exposure to sunlight outweighed by a considerable degree the risks of skin cancer, premature ageing and melanoma’ – so effectively buried by all those anti-sun campaigns that few of us ever heard of it?¹

Time for a Rethink?

The time has come to re-examine the facts. What researchers are beginning to rediscover is that safe sunbathing will not harm your health. Instead, it will positively provide a serious and sustained boost and protect you from a wide range of diseases including chronic skin problems and internal cancers.¹ If this is right, and sunlight really can protect against lung, bowel and breast cancers, heart disease, psoriasis and even the degenerative nerve condition multiple sclerosis (MS), then we all need to re-think our attitude to being out in the sun.

In his excellent book, The Healing Sun – Sunlight and Health in the 21st Century, the complementary health practitioner and sunlight researcher Richard Hobday, writes: ‘Each year, lack of sunlight probably kills thousands more people than skin cancer.’

He knows this is a controversial claim, and one that flies in the face of 20 years of anti-sun campaigning, but he justifies his position by explaining something few people realise: Sunlight actually lowers cholesterol levels, and so is an excellent and natural tool for helping protect against heart disease.

Since this is still the No. 1 killer in the Western world, then even if sunlight has only a small protective effect, Hobday argues, the number of lives saved by controlled, safe and moderate exposure to the sun would greatly outweigh the number of deaths caused by malignant melanoma – but only, of course, once people know how to control their exposure and sunbathe safely.

The key word here – and the one that must be understood if you are to benefit in any way from changing your attitude to being out in the sun – is the word MODERATE. In other words, sunlight therapy only works when you go about it in a safe and controlled way. This means building up your exposure slowly and gradually. It does not mean booking a flight to the Bahamas after spending 49 weeks in a windowless office, throwing caution to the wind and allowing your poor body to sizzle.

Why Being in the Sun Makes You Feel So Good

The birds, the bees, my dog, my hens and even snakes do it, so it’s hardly surprising that when the sun does come out, we all feel a pull to find a warm spot, lean back against a wall, close our eyes and worship it. Something happens when you turn your face or the back of your neck to the sun which simply makes you feel a whole lot better.

That something is no longer a mystery, thanks to our expanding knowledge of brain biochemistry. What happens is that sunlight triggers the increased production of the feel-good brain chemical serotonin, which, as well as controlling sleep patterns, body temperature and sex drive, lifts your mood and helps ward off depression.

The reason so many of us suffer from the winter blues or even a condition called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) – which now affects 20% of the adult population – is that the body makes less serotonin in winter. Popular prescription antidepressants such as Prozac work to increase serotonin levels in the brain – and so does sunlight, which is why SAD sufferers eventually resort to an artificial indoor light-box treatment. What they should be doing, of course, is finding a way to spend a little time out in natural sunlight every day.

One intriguing new and as yet untested suggestion is that, during the summer, the body builds a kind of ‘sunlight memory bank’ to help those of us living further from the equator through the darker winter months. The theory is that the amount of serotonin your body produces in winter will be directly related to the amount of exposure to sunlight you enjoyed the previous summer.

Could it really be true that the amount of safe sunbathing you have done in the summer will determine whether you can keep the winter blues at bay once the days grow short and cold?

If you cannot wait for the science to tell you this is so, try a late sunshine break for yourself and see the difference it makes. One year, for example, I went to Antigua at the end of October. It was the first year I had been in a sunny climate so late on in the year and it was the first year I made it through a long UK winter and reached the end of February without thinking I couldn’t bear another cold, grey and miserable day.

I know this is only anecdotal, but it was a promising enough result for me to pick up the phone to the travel agent when spring finally arrived to book a similar late autumn sunshine break for the following year. I felt, in some odd way, as if I had been more paced and even-tempered in my mood through the winter months instead of reaching March feeling depressed.

The Sunshine Vitamin that Is Really a Hormone

The pro-safe sunshine lobby – and it should be apparent by now that I count myself among them – have a powerful ally in the shape of a vitamin that is not a vitamin at all but a hormone: Vitamin D.

Sunlight triggers the body to make it’s own vitamin D, which is crucial not only for strong bones and healthy teeth but for keeping the immune system working.

Studies have shown, for example, that exposing the body to sunlight or even ultraviolet light from an artificial source increases the number of white blood cells, or lymphocytes. These are the body’s primary defence against the onslaught of an infection, and are an important part of your immune response to the organisms that cause illness. Vitamin D also plays a role in increasing the amount of oxygen your blood can transport around the body – which, in turn, will boost your energy levels, sharpen your mental faculties and give you an improved feeling of well-being.

Few people realise the body also needs ultraviolet light to break down cholesterol, which may otherwise, at high levels, damage the lining of the arteries causing serious cardiovascular disease. Both cholesterol (which is needed to make the sex hormones) and vitamin D are derived from the same substance in the body: a chemical called squalene which is found in the skin. There is a new theory that in the presence of sunlight, squalene is converted to vitamin D, but without sunlight, it is converted instead to cholesterol.

Another reason sunlight is important to health is that you will only get a quarter of the vitamin D you need from the typical Western diet. The rest must come from exposure to the sun. You do not have to burn or tan to get the vitamin D you need. Just 20 minutes of safe sun exposure a day will do it. Of course, in some climates, there are times when this is impossible.

In the UK, for example, you cannot make vitamin D from sunlight between the months of October and March because the UVB radiation with the right wavelength that is needed to achieve this is only present at ground level from April to September. This means you are dependent on the vitamin D store you have built up the previous summer. This takes us back to the idea of building a sunshine bank and, if you live in colder climates, may prove your perfect excuse yet for a long holiday in the sun.

Without vitamin D the body cannot absorb calcium or use it for bone-building. Also, as you get older, your body finds it harder to absorb the vitamin D you do manage to get in your diet. While the recommended minimum dose under the age of 50 is 400 international units (iu) a day, over the age of 50 this rises to 600.

Lots of people think they can compensate for these problems by taking calcium supplements to keep bones strong or drinking a glass of milk each day. But you will waste your money on calcium pills if you don’t get your 20 minutes in the sun or, if you cannot do this, take a vitamin D supplement to make sure the body can absorb it. Also, the amount of vitamin D in a glass of milk varies too widely to be sure of meeting, let alone exceeding, the recommended daily allowance (RDA).

Too much vitamin D can be toxic and predispose you towards kidney stones. If you know this is a risk, watch your intake of both vitamin D and calcium. Some prescription drugs, particularly anticonvulsant medicines, can deplete levels of vitamin D, so check with your doctor that you are not becoming deficient. Vitamin D is not toxic until you hit doses of around 2,400 iu per day – nobody needs or should be taking more than 1,000 iu a day.

The Skin Cancer Story and How to Protect Yourself

Here’s a strange irony: Those countries which have taken the threat of skin cancer seriously and which have encouraged the population to use strong sun-protection creams over the last 20 years are reporting increased rates of malignant melanoma. These include the US, Canada, Australia and the Scandinavian countries. This rise is particularly marked in Queensland, Australia, where sunscreens were first introduced and heavily promoted by health groups.

There can only be one explanation – namely, that the prolonged exposure to sunlight that sunscreens allow, by protecting the skin from burning for longer, must in some way be triggering a greater cancer risk.

There are, of course, two types of burning rays, UVA and UVB. Both cause burning and tanning, but UVB was always thought to be the more damaging of the two, since it causes more rapid burning of the skin. In fact, until recently when it was discovered that UVA actually penetrates much deeper, health experts thought UVA was harmless.

What they now know is that not only does the UVA wavelength penetrate far more deeply, causing damage to the collagen that gives skin it’s elasticity, it is also more closely associated with malignant melanoma and premature ageing than UVB.

Scientists are now concerned that sunbathers may have been using high-protection creams which only blocked the UVB rays, and that this might explain why skin cancer rates have risen worldwide.

The simplest way to protect yourself from the sun’s more damaging rays and to use sunlight to boost health is to learn how to sunbathe safely, how to build up your exposure slowly and when to stay in the shade and wear a hat when sunlight is at it’s most intense and likely to burn you.

Osteoporosis – The Silent Epidemic

If you need calcium for strong bones and you need vitamin D to make sure the calcium you eat can do it’s job effectively then you don’t have to make a huge intellectual leap to realise how important sunlight must be in keeping your very bones healthy and strong.

Vitamin D also maintains the balance between phosphorous and calcium and protects against bone loss by lowering excessive levels of parathyroid hormone, one of the chemical messengers which controls the breakdown of bone. Too little vitamin D and, as an adult, you are at risk of a condition called osteomalacia where calcium leaches from the bone matrix, leaving it soft. This can, if left unchecked, lead to osteoporosis – or brittle bone disease – which now affects one in every three women and one in 12 men.

Women naturally start to lose bone density after the age of 30. With men, this is usually delayed to the mid-50s. The menopause can accelerate this problem in women because levels of oestrogen, the female hormone which helps bones to absorb calcium, begin to decline. There may be no symptoms until a bone has fractured, and by the time you are at serious risk of osteoporosis, you may have already lost a third of your starting bone mass.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is predicting that the number of hip fractures, for example, could increase six-fold to over six million by the middle of this century. This is why osteoporosis is being described as an epidemic, yet one solution could be as simple and as free as safe sunbathing, because in studies of elderly populations who have suffered a broken hip, up to 40% have been shown to be lacking in vitamin D. There are also more hip fractures in winter, when bone density is at it’s lowest.

Other Ways Sunlight Can Protect You

In laboratory tests, vitamin D has been shown to slow down the growth rate of cancer cells. Does this mean that far from being the frightening cancer-trigger we all fear, sunlight could actually protect us from some of the cancers that are now responsible for more deaths in the West, after heart disease, than any other condition?

With a recent prediction by Macmillan nurses that cancer will affect up to one in two adults in the next generation, we need to find out why it is that death rates from many internal cancers increase the further you are from the equator. Why do malignant melanomas develop most often on body parts that are not usually exposed to sunlight – such as the back of the legs and the torso – and why are these rates higher in less sunny parts of Europe than in those closer to the equator?

In other words, why should living in warmer climes offer you greater protection from cancer – a disease that brings more fear than any other?

While epidemiological studies have shown, again and again, that this really is the case, nobody can explain why. The theory currently most favoured is that it would make good sense to investigate the link between sunlight and the stimulation of the body’s own natural defence, the immune system.

How to Sunbathe Safely

So, how can you benefit from this wonderful and free health tonic? You know sunlight can heal and you know it can harm you. To enjoy the first and avoid the second, the single most important thing is to avoid burning at all costs.

Frequent, short exposure to sunlight is both safer and more beneficial than any prolonged exposure where, without creams, you will surely burn and where, even with them, you may be doing more internal damage than you think.

Early morning sunshine has been identified as the most beneficial, so get outdoors after breakfast. The full spectrum of sunlight is now recognised as being important to good health, so do not smother yourself in sunblocks and screens that filter out some of the allegedly more harmful rays. Instead, build your exposure up slowly and, if you are worried about burning, start with short exposures of just your feet and work your way up the body.

The recommended air temperature, when you sunbathe for health, should be below 18 degrees C (64 degrees F). Wear a hat so that the sensitive skin on your face, head and neck is safe, and avoid baking. You are not a cake!

The most important thing – and I will say it again – is to avoid trying to squeeze your sunbathing into the two short weeks of an annual holiday. Instead, plan ahead and pace yourself over the year, trying to spend a little time out of doors each and every day.

Remember, 20 minutes of safe sunbathing is enough to get all the health benefits we are now rediscovering.