Why I Don’t Do Sunscreen (& Never Will)

While I’m on the subject of healthy skin, I thought I’d include a post about my aversion to sunscreens. I don’t wear them and never will.

I stopped using sunblock the moment I stopped being a beauty editor a few years ago. A combination of gut feeling and research told me what I was being told to “protect” my skin with was little more than a poison (and poisonous it is).

You see, the sun is a life-giver. Without it, we’d be on our way out. The amount of sun we can tolerate depends on various factors from skin type to foods we include in our diet. But somewhere along the way, we’ve been told to fear the sun. Cover up and slather up the marketing hype tells us, and we’ll be doing a great job of protecting ourselves from that nasty cancer-causing ball or fire in the sky.

So why, was my question, had the skin cancer rates skyrocketed? Why were we being told to suddenly be scared of the very thing that gives life to the planet and everything on it? Dollars of course. Scare the masses and they’ll buy the product.

Here’s an excerpt from Natural News:

The idea that sunscreen prevents cancer is a myth. It’s a myth promoted by a profit-seeking tag-team effort between the cancer industry and the sunscreen industry. The sunscreen industry makes money by selling lotion products that actually contain cancer-causing chemicals. It then donates a portion of that money to the cancer industry through non-profit groups like the American Cancer Society which, in turn, run heart-breaking public service ads urging people to use sunscreen to “prevent cancer.”

With all of the chemicals that make up the hundreds of sunscreens on the market, it begs the question to be asked. What happens to all of those chemicals when you put them on your body’s largest organ, the skin? Well, not only are we told to put them on our skin, we’re told to wear them in the sun. So effectively, we’re baking ourselves with toxic, cancer-causing chemicals.

Another excerpt from Natural News:

The scientific evidence, however, shows quite clearly that sunscreen actually promotes cancer by blocking the body’s absorption of ultraviolet radiation, which produces vitamin D in the skin. Vitamin D, as recent studies have shown, prevents up to 77 of ALL cancers in women (breast cancer, colon cancer, cervical cancer, lung cancer, brain tumors, multiple myeloma… you name it). Meanwhile, the toxic chemical ingredients used in most sunscreen products are actually carcinogenic and have never been safety tested or safety approved by the FDA. They get absorbed right through the skin (a porous organ that absorbs most substances it comes into contact with) and enter the bloodstream.

We need the sun. The days of fearing it are long gone for me. So what happens if I’m going to be out in the sun for hours? Sure, I wear sensible clothing and a hat. I also regularly include foods in my diet that prevent sunburn such as spirulina. As per my past post, I apply extra virgin coconut oil to my skin daily which, as a bonus, works as a natural protector if I’m to spend many hours in the sun.

Sunburn only happens due to nutritional deficiencies. Since becoming vegan and eating (mostly raw) plant-based foods I rarely experience sunburn. Pretty neat, I reckon!

I reach for the spirulina instead.