LACK of Sun Could Cause Skin Cancer
Well, I’m on vacation this week, trying to enjoy the best that Cape Cod has to offer: Seafood, salt water and sun! So far, I’ve eaten lobster, scallops, salmon and swordfish, and spent a lot of time swimming in an indoor salt water pool… Thanks to Hurricane Danielle, it hasn’t stopped raining since Sunday. But I guess two out of three ain’t bad. If nothing else, the inclement weather has given me a chance to watch the Little League World Series and follow the Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren divorce! Although, I really didn’t expect to be leaving the beach with Vitamin D deficiency… which brings me to the point of this post.
Conventional dogma continues to teach us to stay out of the sun in order to avoid skin cancer, and slather ourselves with sunscreen whenever we go outside – especially if we’re fair-skinned. Granted, overexposure to harmful UV rays can increase our risk of melanoma; but the aforementioned recommendations are largely flawed for the following reasons:
1. The sun is our major source of Vitamin D, which has actually been shown to decrease cancer risk by improving our ability to regrow cells. In fact, a study from the Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego suggested that 600,000 cancer cases could be prevented every year simply by increasing levels of Vitamin D. Staying indoors and bathing in sunblock are both counterproductive because they prevent us from synthesizing Vitamin D.
2. Toxic ingredients in sunscreen could be carcinogenic. Octyl methoxycinnamate (OMC) is found in 90 percent of sunscreen products; yet, it damages living tissue if it penetrates your outer layer of skin. Even worse, the sunscreen compound titanium dioxide has been named a “potential occupational carcinogen” by the U.S. government. Bet you didn’t know that!
Bottom line: As with most other things, too much sun can be bad for you. But regular exposure to sunlight WITHOUT sunscreen is crucial to cancer prevention. Now you know!
Filed under: Did You Know?
