The earth is a solar - powered planet with sunlight providing the basic component, from which all life originates, develops, heals, and evolves, writes DR MARGA BOYANI.
If you took away sunlight, all life on earth would soon perish. This includes humanity, which needs sunlight for health and well-being. Deprived of sunlight, man loses physical vigour and strength.
Since before the time of ancient Egypt, doctors and natural healers relied on sunlight to treat wounds, bone diseases or lung infections like tuberculosis. Before the advent of antibiotics, sunlight was used successfully to speed up the healing of wounds because it’s an efficient germ killer. All the known benefits of sun were, however, ignored when researchers began to link skin cancer with over exposure to sunlight. It is true that the wrong kind of sun exposure will increase your risk of cancer, but safe amounts alleviate a host of problems.
Everyone knows you need calcium for strong bones and teeth, but to make sure the calcium you eat can do its job, you also need a good supply of vitamin D to help you absorb calcium from your intestines.
Sunlight is man’s primary source of vitamin D and safe sun exposure reduces the risk of rickets, osteoporosis and its complications like fractures.
Vitamin D is a hormone-like substance that the body can only make when it gets enough sunlight. You get only a quarter of the vitamin D you need from your diet with the rest coming from the sun. The body is better able to use the vitamin D it makes itself than that which it gets from the diet.
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 a feeling of wellbeing.
Sunlight can help lower blood cholesterol levels and so is powerful in the fight against heart disease. Both cholesterol, which is needed to make the sex steroid hormones, and vitamin D are derived from the same substance in the body, which is also found in the skin. In the presence of sunlight, this substance is converted to vitamin D but in the absence, it is converted to cholesterol raising its levels. Sunlight can also affect blood pressure because levels are higher during winter and lowest in the summer.
Without enough vitamin D, the body increases levels of the hormones that not only leach calcium from the bones but also raises blood pressure.
Taking a daily ten to 15-minute walk in the sun not only clears your head and relieves stress; it could also cut your risk of cancers according to scientists. Studies have shown that people with low vitamin D levels have higher levels of common types of cancers including colon and breast. They have also shown that lighter-skinned people who are regularly exposed to sunlight have a reduced risk of developing melanoma, a skin cancer. How does this work? The vitamin D produced in the skin by the sun’s rays improves the function of your immune system by increasing the number of white blood cells. Even better, according to some health experts, sunshine may prevent more cancers than it causes because Vitamin D also controls cell growth, inhibits the growth of cancer cells and stops cancer-aiding blood vessels from being formed, curbing the tumour’s ability to spread.
Sunlight also triggers an increase of the feel-good hormone — serotonin which, as well as controlling your sleep pattern, body temperature, and sex drive lifts your mood.
You can reap the sun’s health benefits with as little as 20 minutes of sun exposure with darker skinned people needing longer exposure to benefit.
