What Really Works: The Insider’s Guide to Complementary Health. Susan Clark
the bees, my dog, my hens and even snakes do it, so it’s hardly surprising that when the sun does come out, we all feel a pull to find a warm spot, lean back against a wall, close our eyes and worship it. Something happens when you turn your face or the back of your neck to the sun which simply makes you feel a whole lot better.
That something is no longer a mystery, thanks to our expanding knowledge of brain biochemistry. What happens is that sunlight triggers the increased production of the feel-good brain chemical serotonin, which, as well as controlling sleep patterns, body temperature and sex drive, lifts your mood and helps ward off depression.
The reason so many of us suffer from the winter blues or even a condition called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) – which now affects 20% of the adult population – is that the body makes less serotonin in winter. Popular prescription antidepressants such as Prozac work to increase serotonin levels in the brain – and so does sunlight, which is why SAD sufferers eventually resort to an artificial indoor light-box treatment. What they should be doing, of course, is finding a way to spend a little time out in natural sunlight every day.
One intriguing new and as yet untested suggestion is that, during the summer, the body builds a kind of ‘sunlight memory bank’ to help those of us living further from the equator through the darker winter months. The theory is that the amount of serotonin your body produces in winter will be directly related to the amount of exposure to sunlight you enjoyed the previous summer.
Could it really be true that the amount of safe sunbathing you have done in the summer will determine whether you can keep the winter blues at bay once the days grow short and cold?
If you cannot wait for the science to tell you this is so, try a late sunshine break for yourself and see the difference it makes. One year, for example, I went to Antigua at the end of October. It was the first year I had been in a sunny climate so late on in the year and it was the first year I made it through a long UK winter and reached the end of February without thinking I couldn’t bear another cold, grey and miserable day.
I know this is only anecdotal, but it was a promising enough result for me to pick up the phone to the travel agent when spring finally arrived to book a similar late autumn sunshine break for the following year. I felt, in some odd way, as if I had been more paced and even-tempered in my mood through the winter months instead of reaching March feeling depressed.
The Sunshine Vitamin that Is Really a Hormone
The pro-safe sunshine lobby – and it should be apparent by now that I count myself among them – have a powerful ally in the shape of a vitamin that is not a vitamin at all but a hormone: Vitamin D.
Sunlight triggers the body to make it’s own vitamin D, which is crucial not only for strong bones and healthy teeth but for keeping the immune system working.
Studies have shown, for example, that exposing the body to sunlight or even ultraviolet light from an artificial source increases the number of white blood cells, or lymphocytes. These are the body’s primary defence against the onslaught of an infection, and are an important part of your immune response to the organisms that cause illness. Vitamin D also plays a role in increasing the amount of oxygen your blood can transport around the body – which, in turn, will boost your energy levels, sharpen your mental faculties and give you an improved feeling of well-being.
Few people realise the body also needs ultraviolet light to break down cholesterol, which may otherwise, at high levels, damage the lining of the arteries causing serious cardiovascular disease. Both cholesterol (which is needed to make the sex hormones) and vitamin D are derived from the same substance in the body: a chemical called squalene which is found in the skin. There is a new theory that in the presence of sunlight, squalene is converted to vitamin D, but without sunlight, it is converted instead to cholesterol.
Another reason sunlight is important to health is that you will only get a quarter of the vitamin D you need from the typical Western diet. The rest must come from exposure to the sun. You do not have to burn or tan to get the vitamin D you need. Just 20 minutes of safe sun exposure a day will do it. Of course, in some climates, there are times when this is impossible.
In the UK, for example, you cannot make vitamin D from sunlight between the months of October and March because the UVB radiation with the right wavelength that is needed to achieve this is only present at ground level from April to September. This means you are dependent on the vitamin D store you have built up the previous summer. This takes us back to the idea of building a sunshine bank and, if you live in colder climates, may prove your perfect excuse yet for a long holiday in the sun.
Without vitamin D the body cannot absorb calcium or use it for bone-building. Also, as you get older, your body finds it harder to absorb the vitamin D you do manage to get in your diet. While the recommended minimum dose under the age of 50 is 400 international units (iu) a day, over the age of 50 this rises to 600.
Lots of people think they can compensate for these problems by taking calcium supplements to keep bones strong or drinking a glass of milk each day. But you will waste your money on calcium pills if you don’t get your 20 minutes in the sun or, if you cannot do this, take a vitamin D supplement to make sure the body can absorb it. Also, the amount of vitamin D in a glass of milk varies too widely to be sure of meeting, let alone exceeding, the recommended daily allowance (RDA).
Too much vitamin D can be toxic and predispose you towards kidney stones. If you know this is a risk, watch your intake of both vitamin D and calcium. Some prescription drugs, particularly anticonvulsant medicines, can deplete levels of vitamin D, so check with your doctor that you are not becoming deficient. Vitamin D is not toxic until you hit doses of around 2,400 iu per day – nobody needs or should be taking more than 1,000 iu a day.
The Skin Cancer Story and How to Protect Yourself
Here’s a strange irony: Those countries which have taken the threat of skin cancer seriously and which have encouraged the population to use strong sun-protection creams over the last 20 years are reporting increased rates of malignant melanoma. These include the US, Canada, Australia and the Scandinavian countries. This rise is particularly marked in Queensland, Australia, where sunscreens were first introduced and heavily promoted by health groups.
There can only be one explanation – namely, that the prolonged exposure to sunlight that sunscreens allow, by protecting the skin from burning for longer, must in some way be triggering a greater cancer risk.
There are, of course, two types of burning rays, UVA and UVB. Both cause burning and tanning, but UVB was always thought to be the more damaging of the two, since it causes more rapid burning of the skin. In fact, until recently when it was discovered that UVA actually penetrates much deeper, health experts thought UVA was harmless.
What they now know is that not only does the UVA wavelength penetrate far more deeply, causing damage to the collagen that gives skin it’s elasticity, it is also more closely associated with malignant melanoma and premature ageing than UVB.
Scientists are now concerned that sunbathers may have been using high-protection creams which only blocked the UVB rays, and that this might explain why skin cancer rates have risen worldwide.
The simplest way to protect yourself from the sun’s more damaging rays and to use sunlight to boost health is to learn how to sunbathe safely, how to build up your exposure slowly and when to stay in the shade and wear a hat when sunlight is at it’s most intense and likely to burn you.
Osteoporosis – The Silent Epidemic
If you need calcium for strong bones and you need vitamin D to make sure the calcium you eat can do it’s job effectively then you don’t have to make a huge intellectual leap to realise how important sunlight must be in keeping your very bones healthy and strong.
Vitamin D also maintains the balance between phosphorous and calcium and protects against bone loss by lowering excessive levels of parathyroid hormone, one of the chemical messengers which controls the breakdown of bone. Too little vitamin D and, as an adult, you are at risk of a condition called osteomalacia where calcium leaches from the bone matrix, leaving it soft. This can,