Why You Need to Throw Away Your Sunscreen

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Previously in “Sunshine: Nature’s Best Vitamin (and it’s FREE!)”:

Lack of sun exposure is actually one of the greatest risk factors for disease, and prior to the discovery of antibiotics in the 1930s, sunlight therapy, or heliotherapy, was one of the most successful treatments for infectious diseases.

If you look at statistics regarding skin cancer, you’ll find that the most dangerous skin cancers, melanomas, are more common in people who are indoors for the majority of the daytime. Some of the hottest places in the U.S. have the highest rates of skin cancer, not because they expose their skin to the sun, but because the extreme heat throughout much of the year keeps people indoors during the day. So, even though there’s plenty of sunlight, people avoid it and develop health problems including cancers from underexposure rather than overexposure. And cancerous lesions often appear on areas of the skin which are not typically (if ever) exposed to sunlight: “It has been observed that melanoma occurs in areas where sunscreen is used the most and also that melanoma rates are highest among those that avoid the sun and work in indoor urban environments.”

https://www.graceupongrace16.com/sunshine/

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So if sunlight isn’t what causes skin cancer and premature aging, then what does?

Diet and Lifestyle.

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Your Diet is Your Skincare 

Many people claim that they have to stay out of the sun because it causes their skin to break out, or they’ll get a rash, or it causes damage or dark spots. What is actually contributing to these issues though is primarily diet.

Contrary to popular belief, the sun doesn’t cause the skin damage that we try so hard to reverse with various skin care products- the sun is actually drawing toxins out of our bodies through our skin, to try and remove them from our bodies and restore homeostasis. What we label as skin damage is simply a symptom of deeper congestion within our body, often within the liver. The skin is our largest detoxification organ, our body’s primary avenue for expelling toxins; if symptoms are showing up in the skin, its because our other initial detox organs are overloaded and can’t manage more stress, and the skin becomes the alternate route for toxin excretion, making it vulnerable to the natural elements. Rather than suppress these symptoms with things like medications, let’s take the time to cleanse our bodies and find fuller health. 

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Let’s Clean Up Our Diet

~Polyunsaturated fats/fatty acids (PUFAs) in foods and body care products. 

Polyunsaturated fatty acids are dangerous because of their molecular structure. They contain two or more (hence the poly-) double bonds, which are easily broken apart and therefore unstable in the body; their breaking apart is what causes oxidation. Molecules become oxidized, or damaged, in the presence of light, heat, and/or oxygen. This is problematic considering our bodies constantly maintain warm temperatures, we live on an Earth that requires sunlight to survive, and we require oxygen to live. Obviously we can’t eliminate these factors from our lives- because they are our lives- but we can eliminate these harmful oils. Monounsaturated fats are better because they only have one double bond. But saturated fats don’t have any, and are therefore the most stable and least likely to become oxidized in our bodies.

Polyunsaturated oils are oxidized readily by ultraviolet radiation from the sun and form harmful free radicals (yes, that means there are some beneficial free radicals) which proceed to damage the cell’s DNA and then lead to the degeneration we call cancer. The polyunsaturated fats in refined oils (stripped of their monounsaturated fats), are virtually indigestible dangerous to the body. Margarine, for example, is just one molecule away from plastic, and therefore extremely difficult to digest. Oxidative stress has the potential, if allowed to accumulate, to overpower all of our protective systems and cause chronic degenerative diseases. 

Where are polyunsaturated fats/acids found?

You can do a quick search in your Google box and find an abundance of lists, but here’s a very simplified one:

–Oils, including (but not limited to) canola oil, soybean oil, peanut oil, vegetable oil, flaxseed/linseed oil, grapeseed oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, corn oil, argan oil, black cumin seed oil, camelina oil, cottonseed oil, evening primrose oil, hemp oil, maracuja oil, pumpkin seed oil, red raspberry seed oil, rosehip oil, sesame oil… (the bolded oils are definitely the most prominent, and should be avoided as much as possible).

-Various nuts and seeds

-Cold-water fish

There are going to be times when you simply can’t avoid these PUFAs, or choose to eat something that includes them. That’s okay, but do the best you can and try to keep them as only an occasional part of your diet.

One issue with a lot of these oils is that they’re present in a lot of skincare, even those that claim to be clean and natural. But putting these on your face or body through cleansers and lotions, and then going about our day with various levels of sun exposure, *bam* there’s that interaction between the weak double bonds and oxidizing sunlight, and over time, skin damage.

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Transfats/transfatty acids are also bad news. They promote an inflammatory response throughout the body, may increase risk of diabetes, inhibit the cell’s ability to use oxygen, and make the blood thicker by increasing the stickiness of platelets. 

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How Can We Avoid PUFAs?

Transition to a diet high in saturated fat. Saturated fats are stable, with no double bonds, and do not oxidize and form free radicals (saturated fats are best found in animal meats and fat). Cleaning up the diet is the best and easiest way to prevent premature skin damage and aging. A low-carb, high-fat ketogenic/carnivore diet allows your body all the necessary, stable saturated fats it needs to thrive and heal itself from potential environmental stressors. I will link some resources on the topic below. 

Vitamin E is also a good supplement to take that helps to counteract the negative affects of PUFAs, for those occasions we’re unable to avoid them (make sure though that some form of PUFAs are not secondary ingredients in whatever capsules you find to take).

Grains and sugars (carbohydrates in general) cause a lot of stress on our gut and digestive health. In addition to PUFAs, they contribute to chronic and widespread inflammation throughout our bodies, which affects our mental health, digestive health, and overall strength and immunity. 

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Cleaning Up Our Products: You Need to Throw Away Your Sunscreen

When you apply sunscreen, you are suppressing the body’s normal response to overexposure in which the skin reddens (an indicator to seek shade), and so putting your skin at greater risk for harm from overexposure. Obviously we don’t want to allow our skin to burn, which we can do without lathering our bodies in dangerous chemicals.

Sunscreens have three primary issues: they are powerful free radical generators, increasing cellular damage and changes that lead to disease; they have strong estrogenic activity, and interfere with normal hormone/sexual development; they contain synthetic chemicals that are alien to the human body and build-up in our fat.

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Even when I owned sunscreen, I didn’t wear it often. The most recent sunscreen I owned was very clean compared to most products, and was a mineral sunscreen as opposed to a chemical one; even still, after learning about PUFAs, this one still contained many questionable ingredients, so out it went!

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Safflower seed oil, sunflower seed oil, hydrogenated vegetable oil (I don’t consume that in my food, why would I put it on my skin?), plus a handful of chemicals that I can’t say and don’t recognize… and this is very clean compared to standard sunscreens! (Go take a look at the ingredients in your sunscreen, and consider what those chemicals could be doing to your body.) Better, yes. But I’ll do without, thanks.

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Also, I don’t mean to burst your Burt’s Bees bubble, but the soybean oil and canola oil are reason enough not to be using these products. Gross. A good reminder that “100% Natural” doesn’t mean its clean or good for our bodies. There are so many alternatives that don’t use these questionable ingredients.

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Everything we put on our skin gets absorbed directly into our bloodstream. So that sunscreen is traveling to each and every organ and area of your body, being generous to share it’s toxicity and affecting countless essential functions. The long-term effects of this damage is even more frightening when you consider it can be passed on to your children through exposure in the womb as well as DNA damage that can be inherited.

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To Summarize…

Sunshine is not the villain that it has been made out to be for decades. It is a vital component of true health and wellness. Sunshine does not cause skin cancer or premature aging- it’s our diets, lifestyles, and wide variety of body products that contribute to that. We can clean up these stressors by eliminating PUFAs from our diet and self-care routines, as well as eliminating excess grains, carbs, and sugars from our diets.

We can support our health further by throwing away our sunscreens, which are full of toxic chemicals that become absorbed into our bloodstream and flow throughout our bodies. Of course, we don’t want to allow our skin to burn. It’s important to pay attention to lengths of sun exposure, especially at the beginning of the season and if you’re not used to it. Increase sun exposure gradually, and don’t use sunscreen to prevent absorption- go in the shade, or cover your skin with some light clothing. 

Oxidative stress triggered by our diets and lifestyles can be further relieved by Earthing or Grounding (read my blog post on the topic here). It’s a very simple practice that produces dramatic increases in our physical and mental health.

Finally, it’s also good to try and wean yourself from wearing your sunglasses all the time and build up a tolerance to sunlight, as sunglasses can contribute to eye weakness and degenerative diseases. The more we wear them, the more sensitive we’ll be to light, and then a vicious cycle develops; by regularly shutting out necessary UV light, the eyes are unable to properly repair themselves and replace worn out cells, thereby making them more sensitive to light. 

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I hope this post, and the previous one (find it here) were informative and helpful for you! I’ve found so much benefit from really embracing sunshine in my daily life and utilizing it to improve my health. It’s refreshing to not be afraid of it anymore.

I want you to experience that freedom, too. Please use these posts as resources for yourself, and check out the additional links I’ve provided. If you have questions, don’t hesitate to reach out, I’d love to discuss this topic and more with you!

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Additional Resources:

~Sunscreen and Natural Alternatives

~Heal Yourself with Sunlight, by Andreas Moritz

~Carnivore Code, by Paul Saladino

~Dr. Ivor Cummings, on Youtube

~Dr. Joesph Mercola, on Youtube

~Dr. Ken Berry, on Youtube 

(All of these doctors provide information on sunlight, as well as keto/carnivore lifestyles; additional video resources are also provided in Part 1 of this post, which you can find here).

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