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Blog: SPF and You(June 30, 2014)My book has a section on SPF where it explains what it intended by "SPF" and describes natural substances that provide "sun protection." This blog post intends to debunk SPF. As a girl growing up near Southern California beaches, I learned that sun tans had social value and that sun tanning was a bona fide activity. Every summer I lay on the sand wearing skimpy clothes acquiring a sun tan. While a full-time college student I multi-tasked: sitting on the sand with my freshly-washed hair wrapped around plastic rollers and covered by a net studying a chemistry text book. I sun-tanned while drying my hair and studying. Cool and efficient. In the early days most girls I knew who suntanned applied some product to their skin to enhance the tanning process. Common products were Johnson's Baby Oil, cocoa butter, and Coppertone ("tan don't burn"). We knew too much sun burned our skin, so we learned how much sun our skin could take before burning. Sun burns were unattractive (garish red blotches), painful, and sometimes dangerous. I once was so burned that I was dizzy and almost passed out. And then some chemist dreamed up SPF. This was an effect that could be achieved by adding certain chemicals to suntan products. SPF was sold as something to prevent sunburn. A few years later it was sold as something to prevent skin cancer. More recently it is sold as something to prevent photo aging, i.e., facial lines and wrinkles. I think this is all bunk, the promise of SPF has not been delivered. We still get sunburns, we still get skin cancer, and as we age, our faces still get lines and wrinkles. Is this process delayed or blocked by applying SPF products? Where is the evidence? Consider the societies that do not use SPF products. This is probably most of the third world and much of the semi-industrial world. Are these populations plagued by sunburn, skin cancer, and premature photo aging? No. Clearly . . . (I loved that phrase spoken by my college math teachers) there is something else going on. Our skin and hair are the more visible parts of our bodies. Their condition reflects our health, the health of our metabolism. That health is affected by nutrients, foreign substances, imbalances, and incomplete elimination. Nutrients that are inadequate in quantity and/or quality negatively affect our metabolism. Foreign substances interfere with our metabolism. Imbalances—hormonal, nervous, blood, lymph, muscular—interfere with our metabolism. And incomplete elimination causes the retention of waste products which negatively affect our metabolism. A metabolism so rendered sluggish and congested is visible in our skin and hair. A cosmetic product may correct poor skin quality, but only for the short time that it is present on the skin. Even if some of it is absorbed, it cannot correct the underlying defective metabolism. Skin cancer is a result of a defective metabolism. It is not a simple mechanical response to sunlight. Neither is sunburn. Photo-aging, premature or otherwise, is a little different: it can be hurried by a defective metabolism, but no 90-year-old has the skin of a 20-year-old. Furthermore, our bodies need sunlight. Direct sun exposure creates vitamin D in our bodies, an essential nutrient that is rarely found in foods. Instead of spending your money at the cosmetic counter, buy organic food and prepare healthy meals. Avoid ingesting foreign substances like synthetic vitamins, drugs, GMO corn, and fluoridated-chlorinated water. Avoid applying foreign substances to your skin and body, this includes nearly all commercial cosmetics—including ones with SPF— and the fluoridated-chlorinated water in your bath. Protect yourself from EMF exposure. Not only will your skin and hair look better, you will feel better. Hope in a bottle is mis-placed. |
