Source: MiodwesternDoctor.com
Story at a Glance:
•Skin cancers are by far the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the United States, so to prevent them, the public is constantly told to avoid the sun. However, while the relatively benign skin cancers are caused by sun exposure, the ones responsible for most skin cancer deaths are due to a lack of sunlight.
•This is unfortunate because sunlight is arguably the most important nutrient for the human body, as avoiding it doubles one’s rate of dying and significantly increases their risk of cancer.
•A strong case can be made that this dynamic was a result of the dermatology profession (with the help of a top PR firm) rebranding themselves to skin cancer fighters, something which allowed them to become one of the highest paying medical specialities in existence. Unfortunately, despite the billions that is put into fighting it each year, there has been no substantial change in the number of skin cancer deaths.
•In this article, we will also discuss the dangers of the conventional skin cancer treatments, the most effective ways for treating and preventing skin cancer, and some of the best strategies for having a healthy and nourishing relationship with the sun.
Note: in February’s open thread, I presented some potential articles, and since this topic was one of the most requested, I have spent the last month working on it.
Ever since I was a little child something seemed off about the fact everyone would get hysterical about how I needed to avoid sunlight and always wear sunscreen whenever we had an outdoor activity—so to the best of my ability I just didn’t comply. As I got older, I started to notice that beyond the sun feeling really good, anytime I was in the sun, the veins under my skin that were exposed to the sun would dilate, which I took as a sign the body craved sunlight and wanted it to draw into the circulation. Later still, I learned a pioneering researcher found significant alternations would occur in the health of people who wore glasses that blocked specific light spectrums (e.g., most glass blocks UV light) from entering the most transparent part of the body that could be treated by giving them specialized glasses which did not block that spectrum from entering.
Note: all the above touches upon one of my favorite therapeutic modalities—ultraviolet blood irradiation, which will be the focus of an upcoming article.
Later, when I became a medical student (at which point I was familiar with the myriad of benefits of sunlight), I was struck by how neurotic dermatologists were about avoiding sunlight—for instance, in addition to hearing every patient I saw there be lectured about the importance of avoiding sunlight, through my classmates, I learned of dermatologists in the northern latitudes (which had low enough sunlight people suffered from seasonal affective disorder) effectively require their students to wear sunscreen and clothing which covered most of their body while indoors. At this point my perspective on the issue changed to “this crusade against the sun is definitely coming from the dermatologists” and “what on earth is wrong with these people?” A few years ago I learned the final piece of the puzzle through Robert Yoho MD and his book Butchered by Healthcare.
Throughout my life, I’ve noticed three curious patterns in the medical industry:
•They will promote healthy activities people are unlikely to do (e.g., exercising or smoking cessation).
•They will promote clearly unhealthy activities industries make money from (e.g., eating processed foods or taking a myriad of unsafe and ineffective pharmaceuticals).
•They will attack clearly beneficial activities that are easy to do (e.g., sunlight exposure, eating eggs, consuming raw dairy, or eating butter).
As best as I can gather, much of this is rooted in the scandalous history of the American Medical Association, when in 1899, George H. Simmons, MD took possession of the floundering organization (MDs were going out of business because their treatments were barbaric and didn’t work). He, in turn, started a program to give the AMA seal of approval in return for the manufacturers disclosing their ingredients and agreeing to advertise in a lot of AMA publications (they were not however required to prove their product was safe or effective). This maneuver was successful, and in just ten years, increased their advertising revenues 5-fold, and their physician membership 9-fold.
At the same time this happened, the AMA moved to monopolize the medical industry by doing things such as establishing a general medical education council (which essentially said their method of practicing medicine was the only credible way to practice medicine) which allowed them to then become the national accrediting body for medical schools. This in turn allowed them to end the teaching of many of the competing models of medicine such as homeopathy, chiropractic, naturopathy, and to a lesser extent, osteopathy—as states would often not give licenses to graduates of schools with a poor AMA rating.
Likewise, Simmons (along with his successor, Fishbein, who reigned from 1924 to 1950) established a “Propaganda Department” in 1913 to attack all unconventional medical treatments and anyone (MD or not) who practiced them. Fishbein was very good at what he did and could often organize massive media campaigns against anything he elected to deem “quackery” that were heard by millions of Americans (at a time when the country was much smaller).
After Simmons and Fishbein created this monopoly, they were quick to leverage it. This included blackmailing pharmaceutical companies to advertise with them, demanding the rights for a variety of healing treatments to be sold to the AMA, and sending the FDA or FTC after anyone who refused to sell out (which in at least in one case was proved in court since one of Fishbein’s “compatriots” thought what he was doing was wrong and testified against him). Because of this, many remarkable medical innovations were successfully erased from history (part of my life’s work and much of what I use in practice are essentially the therapies Simmons and Fishbein largely succeeded in wiping off the Earth)….