Sunlight is one of the greatest of all healing agencies.
Pure air, sunlight, moderation, rest, exercise, proper diet, and water are the true remedies that every person should have a knowledge of. Proper application of these principles will cure and prevent nearly all disease. Nature’s process of healing and upbuilding is gradual, and seems slow to the impatient. But in the end, nature does her work wisely and well. Those who persevere in obedience to nature’s laws will reap the reward in health of body and health of mind.
Won’t the Sun Give Me Skin Cancer?
Many people stay from the sunlight from fear of developing skin cancer. This is terribly unfortunate since sunlight is one of the greatest healers. If your bloodstream is clean, alkaline, free-flowing, and plenty of oxygen is getting through to your tissues, you will have a healthy body, which includes healthy skin. Your tissues must have 45% oxygen at all times. But when people eat free fats, this can cut off 60-70% of the oxygen to the tissues. An individual living on a low fat diet, eating primarily only fat found in the natural cells of food, will not have to worry about oxygen being cut off to the tissues and especially to the skin. If you live on a low fat diet, you can get all the sunshine you want and it will do you good.
Sunlight Restores and Heals
The value of sunlight in maintenance and restoration of health, although well recognized, is seldom used practically in the treatment of disease. The important relation of sunlight to health is shown in the effects upon plants and animals in deprivation of its influence. In caves, mines, and other places excluded from sunlight, plants do not grow, or at best attain only a sickly development. The same is true in animals. In the deep valleys among the Alps in Switzerland the sun shines only a few hours each day; consequently the inhabitants suffer terribly from scrofula and other diseases indicative of poor nutrition and lack of sunlight. Higher up the mountain the inhabitants are remarkably hardy and well-developed physically and mentally. The only difference in the modes of life is the great amount of sunshine higher up the mountainside. When the sickly from below are carried up the mountainside, they rapidly improve.
The value of sunlight to the sick has been amply demonstrated by hospital experience, which shows a much larger percentage of recovery in rooms amply exposed to the sun than in those excluded from its rays. That the sun has a powerful influence upon the skin is shown by the great increase in pigment (known as a tan) which is produced by free exposure to the sun and air. This results from an increased activity of the cutaneous layer.
The sunbath consists of exposing as much of the body as possible to the direct rays of the sun. The length of time one should remain in the sunbath depends on the individual and the effect desired. Highly sensitive people, especially when first beginning to take sunbaths, should remain exposed to the rays of the sun for only a short time, ten to fifteen minutes maximum. Less sensitive people and those accustomed to the sun’s rays may remain in the sunbath for twenty to thirty minutes. The sunbath should be concluded by a shower or bath in order to wash off all the perspiration which the body has eliminated as toxic wastes. The effect of sunbathing followed by a bath or shower is very invigorating.
Solar rays consist of heat rays as well as ultraviolet rays. They also contain actinic or chemicals rays, and the therapeutic effects are doubtless due to the combined influence of these three potent forces. Solar rays have been used in the treatment of obstinate ulcers. Undoubtedly, the remedial power of the sun’s rays, properly applied, would be a valuable healing tool for many cases. Once lady had a very bad ulcer on her leg, about two inches in diameter, which doctors could not heal. Arrangements were being made for a skin graft, when one doctor decided to have her expose her ulcer to the sun for twenty minutes at the height of the day. After that the ulcer was carefully washed, and vitamin E and A applied. Within a short time, the entire ulcer had completely healed. Sunlight plus one capsule of Vitamin A, 25,000 I.U. and one capsule of vitamin E, 400 I.U. mixed together and applied to an affected area is one of the greatest healers of skin ailments. This treatment is also effective in burn cases.
The Ancients Loved the Sun
There is much evidence that sun bath was known and employed among the ancients. Plutarch tells us that Diogenes, the renowned Athenian cynic, in his old age was accustomed to lie in the sunshine for the purpose of recruiting his energies – a custom which, accord to Pliny, was common among old men in Greece. It is stated that Diogenes valued his sun bath so highly that when called upon by Alexander, who offered to render him any service in his power, he replied in answer to the kind offer, “Only stand a little out of my sunshine.” According to Pliny, the custom of the sun bath was common among the Romans too. Indeed, both the older and the younger Pliny were accustomed to spend an hour in the exposure to the sun daily after dinner. Hippocrates prescribed the sun bath for chills. Numerous other instances could be cited of the ancient use of the sun bath. One French physician once said to some people who had brought their children to him for treatment, “Take these children to the country; feed them as well as you can; but, above all, roast them – roast them in the sun.”
Vigor declines as we get older, leaving us with less vitality to resist illness. This makes it absolutely essential of the elderly to get plenty of sunlight and fresh, pure air. Get as much sunlight as possible!
Sunlight to the Rescue
After you are exposed to ultraviolet light, the neutrophils in your blood are stimulated to eat germs more rapidly. In some research, it was shown that they doubled their ability to engulf bacteria.
If the sun is able to eliminate bacteria from our air, water, and skin, and is able to strengthen the immune system of a host, it would naturally follow that a person regularly exposed to ultraviolet light would develop fewer illnesses. This is exactly the clinical result observed.
For 12 years, 4,000 male college students of Cornell University were observed, and it was found that there was a direct relationship between the temperature and days of sunshine and the frequency of colds. Smaller groups of patients who considered themselves susceptible to colds were studied. It was found that a 10-minute irradiation with ultraviolet light one to three times a week throughout the winter months resulted in a reduction in the frequent of colds from 27.9% to 40.3%.
The results of another study studying the effects of ultraviolet light in the classroom indicated that children would have less respiratory infections if ultraviolet lights were to be substituted for the standard classroom lights.
Russian scientists have developed a test to check the ability of children’s bodies to build immunity and resist infections. The scientists have found that exposure to ultraviolet light, especially in the winter months, greatly increased the ability of the Russian children’s bodies to resist disease.
In a study involving over 800 children, it was discovered that the incidence of dental cavities was much higher during the winter and spring months than during the summer months. Another study using more than 94,000 boys 12 to 14 years of age, showed that the incidence of cavities was directly related to the amount of sunlight available in the area in which the boy lived; the more sunlight, the less cavities. The boys that lived in areas with over 3,000 hours of sunlight per year had 290 cavities per 100 boys while the group with less than 2,200 hours had 486 cavities. Since dental cavities are partly the result of bacterial invasion, and since exposure to sunlight builds up the immune system, it is not hard to see that exposure to sunlight could also encourage the reduction of the number of dental cavities which may occur.
Get a Tan, Get Healthy
The sun seems to be the mother of all nature’s processes, at the source of all energy, and necessary for all life and growth. Vitamins are the product of sunlight. Sunshine is antiseptic, and is an important factor in the treatment of many diseases. Scientific research and experiments have taught us wonderful lessons of the value of sunlight.
The conclusion is quite simple. Eliminate all free fats, get out in the sunshine, and improve your health and longevity.
Hey men, many of you are spending lots of time in the gym working out like wild men lifting dangerously heavy weights trying to transform yourself into the biggest baddest muscular monster possible. That’s great, and many of you have succeeded in looking like that massive monster you were chasing. Congratulations.
