I receive some resistance when commenting on sunlight exposure, building a solar callous, and all of the other facets involved with dialing in light environment.
Granted, I don’t get much pushback when writing my threads on X, but many of the people who aren’t within our online sphere strongly defend the idea that sunlight is inherently toxic to our physiology.
I’ve spoken to a good number of them in person due to the nature of my work.
It makes sense because there are entire authority structures dedicated to spreading misinformation on the subject, regardless of whether it stems from ignorance or malice.
The most valuable lens to see this subject from is evolutionary biology.
Sunlight exposure CANNOT be inherently harmful for our eyes, skin, and health because it goes against everything that evolutionary biology stands for. We evolved the adaptation to develop more melanin as we expose more of our skin to sunlight properly. We evolved with the sun.
Here’s a recent insight I’ve had as well:
This subject gets into touchy territory for most people.
Firstly, the majority are ignorant in regards to basic evolutionary biology and how our bodies operate on a cellular level. They think sunlight inherently causes skin cancer, but don’t understand the other sources that cause atrophic skin.
Secondly, I think there’s a lot of emotion behind it because it fundamentally taps into the gap between evolution and religion. If you believe in religion, then by default, you don’t believe in evolution by natural selection.
What peaks my interest is how people are so willing to discount evolutionary biology as if it’s some voodoo subject without any evidence to support it.
It’s one of the strongest frameworks to view living organisms from and explains everything in regards to our behavior (sexual selection, energy production, etc) perfectly.
If we didn’t evolve over a long enough timeframe, melanin wouldn’t even exist and there’s a reason why it’s an anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, heavy metal sink battery.
From any angle you can imagine, the deominzation of sunlight doesn’t make sense.
We must obviously respect the sun, but the idea that it inherently causes disease in wrong. In fact, it inherently cures or helps heal many disease models.
If you burn yourself, that’s not the sun’s fault, but your own. It means that your lifestyle isn’t allowing your body to function properly. Most people haven’t done the work to build a solar callous and then act surprised when they burn. In fact, they do everything in their power to make sure melanin production is blunted (sunscreen, sunglasses, contact lenses, clothes, etc).
There are other causes of atrophic (weak) skin that we should be more concerned about such as blue light toxicity, nnEMFs, lack of connection to the Earth, and an unhealthy lifestyle in general.
Much love,
Zaid
You are spot on Zaid. Case in point. There was a tuberculosis hospital set up in Mammoth Cave in the 1800's believing "cave vapors" and the pure air might cure the consumption. The experiment failed the patients got worse several died before is ended. However what was learned was it was the lack of sun light that made things worse... Twenty-five years later, in its December 1867 edition, The Atlantic Monthly wrote, “Like plants shut out from the generous, fostering sun, they paled and died. The appearance of those who came out after two or three months’ residence in the cave is described as frightful. ‘Their faces,’ says one who saw them, ‘were entirely bloodless, eyes sunken, and pupils dilated to such a degree that the iris ceased to be visible; so that, no matter what the original color of the eye might have been, it appeared entirely black.’” ...we now know sunlight is important for treating tuberculosis.
Amazing. Thanks for sharing!