The Sunscreen Myth: How sunscreen products actually promote cancer!

Wow, I started righting this yesterday around lunch time here at work before anyone had posted on this subject, I did check. Now between the time I started and finally posted, someone beat me to the punch.

The recent thread, www.abovetopsecret.com..., discussing anti-persperents and their chemical counterparts has reminded me of another unctuous applicant known as Sunblock/Sunscreen.






Everyone knows about the dangers of prolonged sun exposure as it's pounded in our heads almost daily about the importance of wearing sunblock.

Skin cancer is the most common cancer found in the US.

www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/skin



One could come to the conclusion that this rise in frequency of skin cancer my be caused by chemicals that are found hiding in our sunscreen. And most poeple are getting plenty of sunscreen right? After all, it's almost become a mantra, "to prevent skin cancer, protect your skin from sun exposure with sunblock or sunscreen". Everywhere you look; Tv, billboards, movie ads, the NET. So what gives....?

archive.newsmax.com...



ATS, I give you....PABA, benzophenone-3, homosalate, octyl-methoxycinnamate (OMC) and 4-methyl-benzylidene camphor (4-MBC)



Wait.....I thought these were supposed to protect us.....

What is going on here?

The sunscreen myth: How sunscreen products actually promote cancer




Does sunblock prevent cancer or does it cause cancer due to the chemicals it contains? Or is there something else going on here?

From above link.....




Recently, studies have shown that if the body is rich in vitamin D, it has a profound ability to help prevent cancer. And in contrast, if the body is vitamin D deficient, it is highly susceptible.

www.sunarc.org...



All of this leads me to a few questions.....

1)Does sunblock/sunscreen help prevent skin cancer by protecting one from the sun's allegedly harmful UV rays?

2)Does sunblock/sunscreen cause cancer due to potentially harmful chemicals found inside more than 80% of store brands?

3)Does the sunscreen/sunblock, through the process of blocking UV rays, inhibit Vitamin D absorbtion, which in turn causes cancer, of many kinds, due to Vitamin D deficiency?

So many people are deathly afraid of the sun to the extent that some won't even go outside without being fully covered. And others bask themselves in chemical laden sunblock to the point of ghostly white greasiness. We've been programmed to fear what was once used as a prescription, Heliotherapy. I don't know, but something something isn't right.

-Dev

[edit on 23-7-2008 by DevolutionEvolvd]

[edit on 23-7-2008 by DevolutionEvolvd]

Mods: feel free to delete, move, or combine this thread with another. I should checked before posting.

I hate using sunblock lotions and I have NOT used them in the last 20yrs. I also let my son play without a shirt on in the direct sun just like I did as a kid.


The world is over medicated. I will not take any pill even for a headache. I let my body heal itself and it does a darn good job at it too.


Big pharma is killing the world slowly under the pretense of helping you.

Instead of sunscreen, I just build up a base tan gradually over a few weeks. By the end, I can stay out in the sun as long as I want.

As for the medication, I feel the same way. I try to let my body do the healing also. Thanks for the reply!

reply to post by DevolutionEvolvd


Hello. Daily sunscreen wearer here.

You are correct- chemical laden sunscreens can include some harmful ingredients and ingredients that can cause allergic reactions. Your article mentioned PABA (an abbreviation for para-aminobenzoic acid) and is one of the main ingredients I see in sunscreen all the time. It's amazing so many skin care companies still use such ingredients but there is a reason they do. Unfortunately, it boils down to making the product more aesthetically pleasing to the consumer. Chemical sunscreen agents have a much better texture which results in a more pleasing product compared to their natural and safe mineral ingredient counterparts.

I strongly suggest everyone only use sunscreen consisting of pure mineral pigments. Zinc and Iron oxides are the ingredients to look for as the combination of the two naturally blocks both UVA and UVB rays.

There are actually many conspiracies dealing with sunscreen but something tells me I am dealing with the wrong target group by speaking about it here.

Basically they boil down to:

1) 'Sunblock' being a misleading term and I even remember reading about a year ago that the FDA was investigating the marketing term because it is impossible to fully 'block' sun rays as they can only be filtered, or 'screened.'

2) Inadequate SPF. Anything less than SPF 15 is a waste of time. You will see eye creams especially contain SPF levels of 4-5 along with some lip treatments but it is marketing only. Because the eye area is so gentle and because chemical sunscreens can be skin irritants, skin care companies market their eye creams as having SPF but they use such a small amount so it doesn't sting the delicate eye area, therefore making the low SPF pretty much ineffective. It's marketing only.

3) Chemical sunscreen agents. As we already discussed, they have the potential to be harmful and are used to please the senses of the consumer more than they are intended to protect the skin.

4) Sunscreens consisting of only UVA protection instead of UVA and UVB. I'll spare everyone the long winded scientific details but basically the different rays have different effects on the skin and the different layers of the skin. If you select a UVA only product, your skin is not getting the full protection necessary.

And I will stop there.

Hey, thanks for great post!

Originally posted by AshleyD

Hello. Daily sunscreen wearer here.

Hopefully you are following your own advice by using sunscreen with natural ingredients. I dare not put those chemicals on my skin....

4) Sunscreens consisting of only UVA protection instead of UVA and UVB. I'll spare everyone the long winded scientific details but basically the different rays have different effects on the skin and the different layers of the skin. If you select a UVA only product, your skin is not getting the full protection necessary.

You can block all the UVA you want, however, blocking UVB is essentially blocking your vitamin D absorption. Understand this, when your skin is exposed to sunlight, the UVB interacts with your skin causing it to produce vitamin D from cholesterol.

I believe that vitamin D deficiency is the major contributing factor for high cancer rates, with sunscreen chemicals at a close second.

-Dev

reply to post by DevolutionEvolvd


Heard about this recently.

We've been duped again!

Originally posted by DevolutionEvolvd

Hopefully you are following your own advice by using sunscreen with natural ingredients. I dare not put those chemicals on my skin....

I go one step further and use all natural everything when it comes to skin care. So yes, mineral sunscreen only.

You can block all the UVA you want, however, blocking UVB is essentially blocking your vitamin D absorption. Understand this, when your skin is exposed to sunlight, the UVB interacts with your skin causing it to produce vitamin D from cholesterol.

Interesting point but remember, the word 'sunblock' is misleading marketing. It is impossible to block the rays with sunscreen. So even with a very high SPF waterproof sunscreen, you skin will still absorb both UVA and UVB rays.

Edited to fix quote tags. Wow I haven't goofed those up in a long time. lol

[edit on 7/24/2008 by AshleyD]

I have said time and time again that I believe my thyroid disorder was directly caused by 30 years of sunscreen use / abuse promoted by the medical community. Seriously, don't they do tests before they put us through this crap?? Jeeze!

Originally posted by uplander
I have said time and time again that I believe my thyroid disorder was directly caused by 30 years of sunscreen use / abuse promoted by the medical community. Seriously, don't they do tests before they put us through this crap?? Jeeze!

Seriously, not until they're on the market. Same goes for pharmaceuticals. Kinda scary huh?

reply to post by AshleyD


While I do agree with you about sunscreens not blocking ALL UV light, I think there is more to consider here.

For instance, according to wikipedia, 98.7% of ultraviolet radiation that reaches earths surface is UVA. This leaves us with 1.3% to attribute to UVB. Would it be so hard as to block all of the UVB light considering that it only makes up a fraction of the light received?

I believe a little research is warranted in this case....

This is good, thanks again for contributing.


And a little side note. People who are afraid of UVB radiation causing skin cancer should understand that if a deep tan is acquired, less UVB will be absorbed. This is why in darker skinned individuals it takes longer to produce the maximum amount of Vitamin D from UVB. Thank you melanin.

Thanks for referencing my thread!

I really hope this becomes a trend here at ATS!

The Great Product Conspiracy!!!!!

Part 1 and 2 are in the works

June 2007 study where 785 sunscreens were analyzed and 84% provided inadequate protection from the sun's harmful rays or contained ingredients with safety concerns.

You know, I wasn't surprised after reading this........

I wonder what other products do absolutely nothing for you!

Star and Flag for you!

Excellent

Hey no problem and thanks for the kind words!

Honestly, that figure didn't really jump out at me either.

And of course as we all know, trying to explain this to anyone outside of ATS is like trying teach a pre-schooler physics. They just don't get it, or they just flat out deny it.

I'm doing some research now on how much and of which kind of UV light our sunscreens block. Thanks be to Ashley D!

Anyways, I would like to see this become a trend also.

Thanks,

-Dev

Originally posted by DevolutionEvolvd

Originally posted by uplander
I have said time and time again that I believe my thyroid disorder was directly caused by 30 years of sunscreen use / abuse promoted by the medical community. Seriously, don't they do tests before they put us through this crap?? Jeeze!

Seriously, not until they're on the market. Same goes for pharmaceuticals. Kinda scary huh?

Thats the interesting thing about cancer, there are so many factors that can contribute, its hard to narrow down what exactly caused someones cancer.
And with regards to long-term exposure products, again its hard to pin down. How long were the tabacco companies able to defer any cancer claims. These companies just dont care, they all have acceptable harm limits and they employ people who weigh the odds for them.

An example would be if they make product x and they know that it will kill or harm 1out of 1000 or that it will take 30 years of exposure to cause harm or kill, they can justify its production. If they can make $1 billion on a product over 30 years and know that people will start to see problems from it at that point, who cares if a group sues for 100 million, they made 900 million.

Its just like the Sodium Benzonate + Citric Acid = Benzene in soda. The benzene produced may be in really small quantities but there are people who drink a 12 pack of soda every day for 30,40 or 50 years and even if they get cancer, there is no way to prove that it was from the pepsi they drank or if it was just genetic or caused by some other envrionmental factor.

Read lables and do research, we truly are what we eat/drink/put on/in our bodies.

Watch out! I'm about to throw a curve ball.....

I think I may have just found a direct correlation between Vitamin D Deficiency, Insulin Resistance and Cancer.

Now, I have outlined earlier in this thread how vitamin D deficiency can result in many forms of cancer. What I have failed to mention is that I believe insulin is the main cause of cancer, aging, heart disease, ect....

So the process, as I hypothesized, is as follows:

1) Either through (a) Diet, or (b) vitamin D deficiency, or (c) both, insulin resistance, or Syndrome X, sets in.

2) This Syndrome X causes your cells to essentially "tune out" insulin due to overexposure, therefore your pancreas has to release even more to compensate.

3) This rise in insulin has a devastating affect on your body, causing aging, heart disease and even Cancer.

I'm not sure if anyone has connected the dots as I have here, but this would explain why having optimum vitamin D levels can help prevent over 70 types of cancer.

Here we have the link between Vitamin D deficiency and Insulin Resistance....

www.springerlink.com...



And here we have the link between insulin resistance and Cancer.....Insulin and It's Metabolic Effects



That article, by the way, is a great read if you want to learn about insulin and how it works in your body.

I'll post more later....I just wanted you guys to see the correlation that just popped into my head. Then I went and confirmed it.......

I have been telling my husband to stop wearing sunscreen for 5 years, and just two weeks ago he went to the doctor and said, "I also always wear sunscreen and try to cover up in the sun." The doctor stopped him and said, they were wrong about that, avoid getting burned, but sun exposure is actually beneficial and neccessary. The doctor told him the truth! I can not believe it.

I have a working idea that I go by. It is this: If your body knows how to use it, or knows how to process it, it is not generally harmful in moderate doses. "It" can be anything.

Take smoking. I'm not talking about the chemical-laden reconstituted cigarettes, I'm talking about real tobacco. Do you think our bodies didn't learn how to handle smoke from fires through 10,000 years of history? WAY back, if your body couldn't handle and deal with smoke, you died early and without breeding.

Take the sun: Your body knows how to handle the sun, and when you get too much of it, it will let you know. (i.e., sunburn). As someone pointed out, getting the sun is actually beneficial and necessary.

Chlorine Bleach: It's the only "sanitizer" I use. Why? Because your body knows how to deal with Chlorine. What do you think salt is made up of? It uses the sodium, and disposes of the chlorine (simplified). I don't advocate drinking the stuff, but if you absorb some through your skin, it isn't as bad as they would have you believe.

Salt: Not as bad as people say it is. What is the natural result of having too much salt in your system? Increased thirst, which eliminates it.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that EVERYTHING is ok to use/have contact with. It's just that if we, as humans, have had contact with it for thousands and thousands of years, the body has developed mechanisms to deal with it in moderation.

Thanks for the reply Sir, however, I do have some issues with it.

Originally posted by sir_chancealot
I have a working idea that I go by. It is this: If your body knows how to use it, or knows how to process it, it is not generally harmful in moderate doses. "It" can be anything.

Well yes and No. Your body will do what it has to do in order to survive(adaptation). Usually though, in the case of say..sunscreen full of harmful chemicals, these adaptations will cause long-term damage of the underlying cause is not addressed.

Chlorine Bleach: It's the only "sanitizer" I use. Why? Because your body knows how to deal with Chlorine. What do you think salt is made up of? It uses the sodium, and disposes of the chlorine (simplified). I don't advocate drinking the stuff, but if you absorb some through your skin, it isn't as bad as they would have you believe.

I sure hope you don't literally mean this..???? The long term affects of chlorine, as we are just now finding out, are scary. Do you know what Dioxin is? No? Well, it's a byproduct of chlorine that, according to the Envirenmental Protection Agency (EPA), is 300,000 times more potent as a carcinogen than DDT.....So be careful with that chlorine there buddy.

Salt: Not as bad as people say it is. What is the natural result of having too much salt in your system? Increased thirst, which eliminates it.

Processed salt, not so much. All natural sea salt, now there is nothing wrong with that. Processed salt is depleted of nutrients and is just straight up sodium chloride. This is why it causes problems. If you use sea salt, which is full of nutrients, it will actuall improve your health.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that EVERYTHING is ok to use/have contact with. It's just that if we, as humans, have had contact with it for thousands and thousands of years, the body has developed mechanisms to deal with it in moderation.

I just can't buy the thought process that, in moderation, everything is ok. This really just simplifies things and makes a generalization of all foods without really considering how certain foods/chemicals act in your body.

Just an example. Putting exercise aside, lets say you wanna lose fat by improving your diet only. The general thought is that if your calorie consumption is lower than your calorie expendature, you lose weight(over time). But this generalization doesn't take into consideration many factors that determine fat loss. If I take two of you and have one eat your regular high processed carb diet(typical american diet), and the other eat a high protein, low processed carb diet that includes fruits and vegetables as the only source of carbs while having both of you consume the exact same amount of calories, the latter subject will lose more fat. Period.

It's these generalizations that get us into trouble sometimes.

-Dev

One simply perceives externally of what they believe in internally of mind.

so we cant drink water because of fluoride. Hitler used it first....
we cant brush our teeth because of fluoride.
we cant drink diet soda because of aspartame.
crystal lite is full of that stuff too.
cant wear sun screen. it promotes cancer.
cant play capcom video games because of sublimital messaging.
cant smoke tobacco because of all the chemicals.
cant eat pig because of this new disease.
cant eat tomatoes or jalepino peppers because of salmanela.