Using Sunlight to Heal Our Brain

Conditions such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s arise due to our brains not being able to flush out toxins at night through our cerebrospinal fluid. As a result, toxic proteins and plaques build up, leading to neurodegeneration.

Melatonin has been shown to increase the removal of toxic proteins by supporting our brain’s detox pathway - the glymphatic system. When we create melatonin throughout the day through proper light exposure, we are able to secrete even more melatonin at night.

Two-thirds of the energy our bodies require come from light, while only one-third comes from food? We may make serotonin in our gut, but digestion begins in our skin and eyes.

Serotonin requires tryptophan, which is created when we absorb ultraviolet (UV) light. Serotonin ultimately creates melatonin.

Our thyroid hormones, along with crucial “feel-good” neurotransmitters like dopamine are derived from tyrosine, which we also absorb under UV light.

We have many inner caves inside our brain. One of them contains our pineal gland, which regulates our hormones by capturing light. We have another cave called the substantia nigra, which means “black substance.” This area of our brain is coated with a dark pigment called neuromelanin. Neuromelanin, like the melanin of our skin, is an electronic circuit that works by absorbing light. Neuromelanin absorbs infrared light, whereas the melanin of our skin absorbs UV.

Dopamine can also be made directly from melanin. However many of us don’t make enough dopamine or melanin since we have been taught to fear UV light.

Most of the experiments showing harm from UV were done in labs, not under the presence of full spectrum sunlight.

Sunlight always contains at least 40% infrared all year round, which helps to repair and restore the hormetic stress from UV during the day. Hormetic stress like exercise, cold showers, or running from predators is an acute type of stress we need so that we can have resilient immune and nervous systems.

Without UV-B, the type of light we block when wearing sunscreen and sit behind windows, we wouldn’t be able to make Vitamin D. Our pituitary, thyroid, thymus, pancreas, and adrenals all require UV light to function properly.

Alzheimer's Disease International predicts that there will be about 135 million cases worldwide by 2050 — up from 44 million cases today. The World Health Organization (WHO) predicts that by 2040, as many developed countries' populations get older, neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, dementia, and Parkinson's disease will overtake cancer to become the second leading cause of death after cardiovascular disease.

The study of epigenetics has shown that 95-99% of all disease is based on how our environment turns certain genes on and off. Only 1-5% of diseases have a pure, unchangeable genetic component.

I hear it all the time: “My grandmother had cancer, my mother had cancer, therefore there’s a good chance I’ll probably have it.” If you stay in the same house, eat the same food, and consume toxic amounts of EMF, this could surely be the case. The good news is that we can all be mindful of and adapt to our environments by removing devices and physically moving to different locations that may have a stronger, more healing magnetic field.

Our ancestors didn't have blue light at night. Before the Industrial Age and the advent of electricity, neurodegenerative disease was extremely rare. Today, many of our fathers and grandfathers sit in front of screens that emit blue light, instead of a regenerative red-lit fire. Before the 1800s, our melatonin wasn’t disrupted by blue light either.

Blue light desensitizes us to dopamine. As it turns out blue light spikes our dopamine, making us feel good in the moment, however we then gradually become less sensitive to dopamine, requiring more than before. Blue light also destroys our ability to make melanin and melatonin, which then doesn’t allow us to make enough dopamine as well.

Could it be that we aren’t “getting older”, but instead are losing our ability to flush accumulated toxins when we sleep?

One remedial strategy is the increased use of DHA in the diet. DHA is the most ancient of Omega 3 fatty acids, and helps us to repair at night through a process known as autophagy, while helping to protect our retina from damage. The bad news is, blue light destroys DHA in our retina. How can we consume DHA naturally? It’s present in delicious, oily fish such as salmon and mackerel, in addition to supplementation.

Although our skin also has photoreceptors that will absorb blue light, our eyes need the most protection, as they’re loaded with the most melatonin receptors.

If you do choose to be in front of blue light at night, you can wear amber-red colored glasses to limit the damage and also use screen filters.

We need UV light to build dopamine. So how do we absorb more UV without getting burned? Pre-load your skin with massive amounts of infrared light first thing in the morning. If you have pale skin, then you definitely need more infrared before attempting to tan and build your healthy hormonal stores of UV.

Infrared and red light penetrate more deeply into our bodies than red or blue light, and for this reason they help us regenerate our organs, bones, and promote growth.

Blue light is also necessary for us to stay alert during the day when we need it most, however should be limited at night. There is plenty of blue light in the early morning, and this is why you should always make sure to get a healthy dose of morning sun. The best way to absorb light and make photosynthesis work for you is by sitting in the morning sun with as little clothing as you can get away with.

from the substack of Roman S. Shapoval on August 7, 2023

To Use Sunscreen or Not to Use Sunscreen?

For two hundred thousand years, we lived without sunscreen. In the last one hundred and fifty years (0.075 percent of our existence as Homo Sapiens) one thing has undergone a radical shift: our light environment. The Industrial Age brought an onslaught of EMFs in the form of the incandescent light bulb, and our lustrous affair with electricity was consummated.

At the same time many of us were being pushed to work indoors during the day, as well as night. A new class of vampiric-looking factory workers was born. Many of the experiments demonizing the potent UV (ultraviolet) wavelengths occurred in the 19th century with the advent of the Industrial Revolution. These experiments were done in lab environments not under full spectrum sunlight, focusing high-intensity UV wavelengths through a quartz lens.

Remember, we had been living in full spectrum sunlight for our entire human existence up until this point. Could it be possible that many of us became more sensitive to the Sun, specifically the more intense UV wavelength, as we lived and breathed mostly indoors, now under electric lighting?

In the past century and a half we’ve lived and worked inside most of the year, sitting in front of our monitors and on our phones day and night, only to don a thong on July 4th. So who’s more responsible for our sunburn? The sun, or our lifestyle?

The question is how do we build back our skin? Sunscreen disrupts our body’s natural mechanism of sun protection: melanin synthesis. Melanin, produced in response to sunlight exposure, builds up over time and eventually produces a healthy tan with protection that can last for weeks or even months.

UV actually lets us create and absorb certain amino acids such as tyrosine, which ultimately get converted to crucial hormones such as dopamine and melanin. Melanin is not only able to transform UV light into heat, which our bodies use to fight cancer cells, but also enhances the amount of infrared (IR) light we can receive from the sun. IR not only helps our bodies repair, IR further builds our skin’s tan, or what is also known as our solar callus. Early morning light has no UV but has balanced blue and red light frequencies. This type of light is excellent for building our callus.

Sunscreen drains our energy. Melanin is not only a pigment that helps us absorb more UV, it is our bodies’ battery bank. Melanin is what gives our skin its literal spark, helping us accumulate electrons from our local environment, replenishing our system with necessary electrons that can even help detox heavy metals, while insulating us at the same time. Our skin is our largest organ. Why would we want to cover it up, and disconnect our electrical circuitry?

SPF (sun protection factor) sunscreens are traditionally sold as blocking out UV-B, which is the type of light that burns. Like the pills we take, “protective” products in EMF-shielding can foster a false sense of security. If we stay out in the sun longer because we don’t feel a burn, we could potentially let in even more UV-A than we would normally, which penetrates deeper into our skin.

Normally the acute stress we get from UV is countered with IR light, but as we cover our melanin, we disrupt how much IR light we can use and absorb as well.

Some sunscreen manufacturers have recently shifted to what is known as broad spectrum, which blocks both UV-A and UV-B. However, now even more of the UV spectrum is blocked, cutting us off from this potent light source. But UV allows us to create many of our thyroid hormones, along with dopamine, serotonin, and melatonin.

If you want truly natural sunscreen, olive oil might be a better alternative than the titanium dioxide nanoparticles that are often sold in many “natural”, benzene-free sunblocks. These types of sunscreens have also been shown to double our risk of a bacterial Staph infection If you want true full spectrum protection, look no further than the clothing aisle. Hemp clothing has been shown to have an average UPF of 50, which means it is 99.9% effective in blocking UV-A and UV-B rays, according to third-party testing.

Studies show that ingesting foods rich in omega 3s such as DHA can also help protect against sunburn. DHA is the most ancient omega 3 on Earth, being over 600 million years old, and actually controls how we express our genetics. In every organ, the concentration of DHA vastly outweighs the concentration of any other omega 3.

Additionally, people in the northern hemisphere suffer from chronically-low levels of Vitamin D, which may do more harm than good when we take it as a supplement. So, what’s the optimal way for us to absorb Vitamin D? The Sun! Specifically the UV-B range of light that most sunscreens block. UV-B makes Vitamin D3 from LDL cholesterol. Now, this is an important fact to remember - if we don’t have cholesterol, we can’t make hormones or vitamins in the right amounts. When we can’t make enough Vitamin D, we become more vulnerable to cancer, heart disease, and depression.

A dermatologist from the University of Edinburgh, Richard Weller, is fighting the mainstream narrative of the Sun being bad for us. Weller began to doubt his profession around 2010, when researching nitric oxide (NO), a molecule produced in our body that dilates blood vessels and lowers blood pressure.

During the darker months of the year, the further we are from the sunny equator, the greater our risk for increased blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and overall mortality. Could exposing skin to sunlight lower blood pressure? Weller exposed volunteers to the equivalent of 30 minutes of summer sunlight without sunscreen and their nitric oxide levels went up and their blood pressure went down! “Because of its connection to heart disease and strokes, blood pressure is the leading cause of premature death and disease in the world, and the reduction was of a magnitude large enough to prevent millions of deaths on a global level.” ~ Rowan Jacobsen, Is Sunscreen the New Margarine? (2019)

Did you know that you’re less likely to die of skin cancer if you’re out in the Sun?

Skin cancer kills less than 3 per 100,000 people in the U.S. each year. For every person who dies of skin cancer, more than 100 die from cardiovascular diseases.

Pelle Lindqvist, a senior research fellow in obstetrics and gynecology at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, home of the Nobel Prize in Medicine, tracked the sunbathing habits of nearly 30,000 women in Sweden over 20 years. Lindqvist found that sun worshippers had a higher incidence of melanoma - but they were eight times less likely to die from it.

Lindqvist decided to look at overall mortality rates, and the results were shocking. Over the 20 years of the study, sun avoiders were twice as likely to die as sun worshippers. In a 2016 study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine, Lindqvist’s team put it in perspective: “Avoidance of sun exposure is a risk factor of a similar magnitude as smoking, in terms of life expectancy.”

So what causes skin cancer? Swedish researchers Orjan Hallberg and Olle Johansson have shown that the overall rate of cancer changed precisely with the increase in exposure of the population to radio waves. In Sweden, the rates of cancer accelerated in the 1920s, 1955, and 1969. In their article, “Cancer Trends During the 20th Century”, the authors note: “In 1920 we got AM radio, in 1955 we got FM radio and TV I, and in 1969 we got TV II.”

Johansson and Hallberg continued to focus on FM radio exposure in connection to malignant melanomas (skin cancers), upon following up on the findings of Helen Dolk at the London School of Hygiene. Dolk and her colleagues had shown that the incidence of skin cancer declined with distance from powerful TV and FM radio transmitters, noting that the FM frequency range of 85 to 108 MHz is close to the resonant frequency of the human body.

In their article, “Malignant Melanoma of the Skin - Not a Sunshine Story,” Johansson and Hallberg refute the claim that the incredible surge of melanoma since 1955 is caused primarily by the sun. Rates of melanoma on the head and feet barely rose at all between 1955-2008, while rates for areas of the body that are typically clothed, especially by Nordics, increased twenty times.

Non-native EMFs in the form of cell towers and satellites have confounded nature’s biological tapestry of light, as we are no longer getting the natural balance of blue, red, and other wavelengths. This is why seeing the sunrise and getting out into morning sunlight is crucial, as the intense blue and violet light is balanced with more infrared, and is what triggers melatonin regeneration for the rest of the day.

We’re all different, but were all born together, under that same sun.

from the substack of Roman S. Shapoval on June 12, 2023