The brilliant delightful sun splashes through misty clouds calling for you to come enjoy the warmth and renewal of too many days trapped inside.  A prisoner to long winters, your computer, too much tv, and an oppressive medical industry telling you that you will get skin cancer if you so choose to enjoy time in the sun.  But you feel in your bones the need to relax and bask and feel the health and energy as you soak up the rays.  There completing the task that has to be done outside or just relaxing with your favorite beverage (mine is a tonic water with you a splash of grapefruit juice and a lime) in a lounge chair out by the ocean with the waves splashing at your feet.  Every cell in your body soaks up the joy being poured into every pore of your being as a few minutes in the radiance becomes a spiritual renewal as well.  And still the drone of the medical industry disrupts our joy of the sun – “you’ll get cancer if you spend too much time in the sun you bad person.”

What are we supposed to do with fifty years of warnings about spending too much time in the sun when we know that it renews us?  Despite the warnings skin cancer rates have gone up five-fold since the fifties and ten-fold in the Nordic countries.  It is almost like a self full filling prophecy about getting cancer if you go into the sun.  Why has there been this large increase in cancer when we have spent less time in the sun and always wear sunscreen?  The effort that has gone into warnings in Australia has not been helpful as skin cancer rates have continued to increase.  What about tanning booths?  Do they really cause skin cancer if used properly and do they give us the same kind of tan and benefit as we get from the sun?  All of this confusion when all we wanted is to have the renewal that we know the sun provides.  The killers of joy and health belong to the rays from the sun or the warnings of the medical industry and chemical exposure in sunscreen?

We will try to explore these issues over the next several posts and try to reach an explanation as to why the skin cancer rates have gone up.  In the meantime, I would suggest that you watch this excellent presentation by Edward Gorham, PhD as he discusses the dilemma of skin cancer and sunscreen use.  This presentation is provided through the efforts of Grass Roots Health, a community of vitamin D researchers, and University of California public tv.  Skin Cancer/Sunscreen – the Dilemma, the forty-five minute discussion leads you through the different type of rays of the sun, why sunscreen has missed the mark over the last fifty years, and perhaps has even made matters worse.

What to look forward to for future post of spending time in the sun:
New changes to sunscreen by the FDA effective in June
How to enjoy the sun and protection that is required or not
Suggestions on artificial tanning

In the meantime, get as naked as you possibly can without getting locked up or insulting the neighbors and go into the sun.  – Pandemic Survivor