Our Relationship to the Sun

Photo by Rampal Singh on Unsplash

In this age in America, where most of us work indoors from 9-5 and are more interested in technology than we are in the natural world, it makes sense that we would lose touch with our ability to decipher what’s good for us and what isn’t. The health of our skin in relation to the sun is no different. How could some people working all day in the sun get tan/leathery, while others could be outside for 30 minutes and turn red, or worse, become subject to disease? (And this isn’t only related to skin color or the amount of melanin in the skin.) Why can we no longer look outside without squinting or needing sunglasses when we hadn’t used them for thousands of years? Rates of skin cancer and melanoma have risen since the advent of chemical sunscreen, yet the mainstream narrative tells us that it’s the SUN that’s dangerous and not the change in our relationship to it. Outside of sunscreen, there are other causes behind burning, like drinking alcohol in the sun, body tolerance, and food choices. I was burning up for years myself, thinking it was just a product of having Irish genes, but I don’t have such sensitivity anymore. I contribute this to a change in my relationship to nature, making my own sunscreen, and some dietary changes. Hopefully, this research can help you too!

Do’s and Don’t of Sun Care ~ Graphics by Akasha Goods

Body Tolerance

When people first come out into the sunlight after winter, you typically see that their bodies have to adapt to the increase in sun, as people will burn if they’ve been pale and not exposed to much sunlight. This is why people like to get their base coat tan before heavy sun exposure- it reduces the burn risk to already have some melanin produced in their skin. Also, if you’re already deficient in Vitamin D, your body will have a more challenging time absorbing the sunlight (which is too bad because sunlight is how you GET vitamin D in the first place). This study by Alfredsson, et al. states that “insufficient sun exposure is a real public health problem,” and that hundreds of thousands of deaths every year may be prevented by getting more sunlight.

It’s not just your skin that takes in the sun - your eyes are just as useful for processing the sunlight. Dr. Courtney Hunt, MD, and Martin Cabello III have a book that highlights research on the impact of light in the body, which you can find for free online here. Chapter 8 discusses the physiological effects of sunlight, describing how the retina takes in photon energy to regulate circadian rhythm and mitochondria functioning, telling the body what to do based on the light that it senses. She’s a big fan of sungazing, a practice where you look at the sunrise and sunset (following a specific protocol, so you don’t damage your eyes in the process!). It can improve overall health and endocrine functioning.

In tandem with this, I have also found that wearing sunglasses can make you burn more easily. 

“Your eyes register how bright it is in order to secrete specific hormones to keep you safe from the sun. sunlight stimulates our pituitary glands, via the optic nerve, to produce a hormone that triggers the melanocytes in our skin to make more melanin.”

When you block out the UV light with sunglasses, you don’t allow the signals to reach your brain that you need to protect from sun damage. This doesn’t mean, however, that if you’re sensitive to the light that you can’t wear any sunglasses- there are times when they are helpful (like in the car while the sun is getting low). However, lessening the dependency on them has benefits over time.

The first blog post I read about sunscreen (full post here) mentions that there is a limit to how much direct sunlight people can take before the body starts burning. I typically take a couple of breaks if I’m out on the beach, either by covering up for 30 minutes in a hat/long-sleeved shirt or sitting in the shade for a bit so the body can process the sun. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) also mentions that people who only use sunscreen as their primary form of sun protection are more likely to burn than those who use less sunscreen and use hats/clothing to cover up during parts of the day.

If you need help discovering how much sun your body can tolerate, the app DMinder can help you calculate how long you should be out in the sun for, using your skin type, altitude, latitude, cloud cover, and other factors.

Food & Alcohol

The post above also mentions that there are foods that contribute to burning (processed vegetable oils, grains, excess sugar), and there are foods that can help your body process the sunlight easier (leafy greens, tomatoes, healthy fats, omega 3’s, etc.) The author also has a blog post specifically dedicated to the foods that help with sun tolerance and some sunburn remedies. It’s pretty interesting to note that tomatoes are helpful for sun protection and are grown during the sunnier times of the year (almost like nature is providing what we need when we need it...🧐). The same thing goes for healthy fats, like coconut and avocado, that are grown in sunny climates!

Several studies found that drinking alcohol in the sun can increase the risk of sunburn, skin cancer, and melanoma. There are some studies here and here (there are several more, but you get the gist!) Imagine my surprise when I found out that our family wasn’t just red from our pale skin, but because we’d bring our beer coolers to the beach every day during our family vacation!

After learning about the harmful effects of conventional sunscreen from the EWG and reading about sunscreens contaminated with carcinogenic chemicals, I became inspired to make my own. The process wasn’t complicated, although when working with zinc oxide (the sun-blocking mineral in the sunscreen), you don’t want to breathe in the particles accidentally. (Here is the brand that we use if you’d like to make your own!) Although my family initially joked around about how I looked like a mad scientist while making my sunscreen, they were all shocked to see that, at the end of the beach day, while everyone else looked like lobsters, I had a nice even tan. Even on the days when I forgot to reapply and started to get a bit of color, my burns were barely there, barely hurt, and were gone by the following day. I didn’t have to worry about my skin peeling, and the ingredients in the sunscreen also acted like a lotion that kept my skin moisturized.

Audrey’s first time making homemade sunscreen 😉

When I first started researching sunscreen, there were many pros and cons about mineral vs. chemical products. The tricky part about mineral sunscreen is that you can’t measure a consistent SPF for it (Although the sunscreen we make ranges between 30-50 SPF, that number varies depending on the oils.) According to the EWG, SPF is inherently misleading in the first place because SPF only measures for UVB rays and not UVA, and the testing process is pretty inconsistent.

“Products with SPF values greater than 50+ also tend to give users a false sense of security. High SPF sunscreens not only overpromise protection but, according to the Food and Drug Administration, may also overexpose consumers to UVA rays and raise their risk of cancer. Many studies have found that people are more likely to use high-SPF products improperly and, as a result, may expose themselves to more harmful ultraviolet radiation than do people who rely on products with lower SPF values.”

Conventional sunscreen also makes you more prone to burning because your body doesn’t have a chance to convert such a high amount of UV light on its own. That’s why you see people (particularly us Irish folk) will put on a high SPF and still burn. Our bodies are not used to converting UV light into vitamins and producing melanin. However, we can be trained otherwise by exposing the body to light in smaller increments until more tolerance builds up (similarly to sungazing!)

Mineral sunscreen also doesn’t work the same way, in the sense that the zinc oxide rests on top of the skin instead of absorbing into it. This is a good thing because the chemicals that absorb into the skin in conventional sunscreen can actually cause skin/thyroid cancer (which is interesting because you wear sunscreen to protect against things like that!) They also can have hormone-disrupting chemicals in them that are readily absorbed into the bloodstream.

There have also been findings from ConsumerLab showing Benzene contamination (found in 51 out of 272 sunscreen and after-sun products), which is linked to blood cancer. You can also find the EWG’s information on sunscreen toxicity in this blog post.

The other thing about chemical sunscreen that I didn’t like was that it was unsafe for the environment and contributes to the destruction of coral reefs, particularly the types using Oxybenzone (benzophenone-3). Mineral sunscreen does not have this effect in nature and is an eco-friendly alternative.

Before and after of coral reef destruction.

In Conclusion

Although there’s a lot of fear-mongering information out there saying that the sun is a terrible danger to us, it seems more plausible that it’s the unhealthy relationship of ourselves to our environment, our poor eating habits, our lack of exposure to the sun, and the toxicity of the chemicals we use to try to protect ourselves from it that are the bigger problem. I know from personal experience that when I changed my diet, started making natural sunscreen, and started getting out in the sun more often, I stopped burning and just generally felt a lot better. I hope this information can bring all who read it into a more symbiotic relationship with our environment and get more people out into the sun!