I can thank Ashley Richmond for tagging me on this Twitter thread.
This is a prime example of appealing to authority for its own sake without any due diligence or proper education on the subject of light and sunscreen.
Unfortunately, it’s how most people think because they’ve had such propaganda shoved down their throats for decades.
I’ll proceed to use this article written by Harvard and systematically break down everything mentioned in it, and why it’s focused on the wrong things.
Let’s begin.
The “Science” of Sunscreen
Here’s the link to the article.
Point #1: Sunscreen & Skin Protection
I quote, “sunscreen is designed to protect your skin from the sun’s damaging rays, but some of the claims made about it suggest it could do more harm than good.”
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Firstly, I despise when people frame the discussion by saying that the sun has damaging rays. It paints a biased and incorrect perspective of sunlight, especially knowing that hormesis from sunlight exposure exists.
Secondly, sunscreen doesn’t protect your skin. It does the exact opposite by creating atrophic skin over time precisely because you’re not getting those light wavelengths onto the skin, hence not giving yourself an opportunity for melanin production and adaptation.
Melanin is the ultimate form of protection from the excessive sunlight exposure because it’s RADIOPROTECTIVE. In other words, it acts as a natural sunscreen and protects against radiation.
Melanin absorbs 99.9% of UV wavelengths and shuttles them into the production of heat, which is why darker skinned people need to spend MORE time sunbathing to get benefit.
Lighter skinned people need to spend LESS time sunbathing to achieve better results because their skin is more sensitive to the sun due to pheomelanin not being as protective as eumelanin.
Now, that doesn’t mean lighter skinned people can’t develop their solar callus because they certainly can. Ashley Richmond, who originally tagged me, even shared this sentiment which I’ll post below.
I’ve also seen this sentiment shared with me from countless other lighter skinned individuals.
Point #2: Myopic Dermatologists
I have a real problem with most dermatologists out there because they dedicate their lives to learning about skin, yet never discuss the finer details of quantum or evolutionary biology such as the opsins and melanin.
This is what happens to people who are educated within the reductionist, centralized medicine paradigm and why I’m passionate about demystifying these subjects for people.
Your average dermatologist is incentivized by money and conventional narratives, not the truth or lifelong learning. That’s the unfortunate reality.
Point #3: Sunscreen Ingredients
I actually don’t give a shit about the ingredients within conventional sunscreens because it distracts from my original points that are rooted in evolutionary biology.
I’m going to sound like a broken record, but every aspect of your biology has evolved to be under sunlight from non-visual photoreceptors to chromophores like melanin and the fact that melanin is found throughout the human body.
Point #4: Sunscreen & Skin Cancer
Like I said before, sunscreen contributes to skin cancer indirectly in a heavy manner because it’s not allowing your skin to absorb necessary UV-A and UV-B wavelengths which serve as a protective mechanism over time through hormesis.
The only time you can build melanin is prime sunbathing hours between 10 AM - 3 PM. If you’re always blocking that biological signal needed to stimulate melanin production, then you’re inevitably going to have weak and dysfunctional skin.
You know what that creates?
The inability to tolerate any substantial amount of sunlight exposure.
As a result, you burn and burn consistently which will eventually create the environment to breed skin cancers. Throw the other factors into that situation like sunglasses, contact lenses, and being bathed in artificial light, and you’re playing a very dangerous game.
This fear mongering around burning is a nothing burger if you use the proper framework of building your solar callus.
Most notably, maximizing filaggrin production through raw AM sunlight exposure on your bare skin is everything.
There’s your holistic solution to avoiding burns while avoiding all sunscreen.
Point #5: Skin Types & Sunscreen
“Given that darker skinned patients have a very low risk of skin cancer, using sunscreen for skin cancer prevention is not necessary.”
She quite literally points to the fact that melanin is highly protective (although she doesn’t know that), but what she doesn’t understand is that everybody can develop their melanin and Vitamin D3 from sun exposure is mandatory for all people to remain in adequate health.
Furthermore, the people with the HIGHEST rate of skin cancer (and any cancer for that matter) have the LOWEST vitamin D levels.
I mean, how fucking blind are most centralized practitioners?
It’s not enough to excuse them with ignorance because these are medical professionals. You know, the very people who are supposed to help keep you in good health and protect you from the dangers of health misinformation?
There’s no excuse.
I call it malpractice.
“However, people looking to ward off the aging effects from sun would still benefit from sun-protective habits, which include sunscreen, sun-protective clothing, and sun avoidance.”
There is a metric fuck ton of evidence on the protective and rejuvenative effect of the red light spectrum through photobiomodulation research on our skin, yet we’re supposed to be worried about it’s aging effects?
Nearly HALF of the light spectrum from sun is found within the red light spectrum.
She even goes to the extent of recommending SUN AVOIDANCE.
On one hand, it’s laughable. On the other, it’s downright dangerous to be a supposed paragon of health information propagating this type of garbage.
Much love,
Zaid