In a paper published in 2016, Richard Weller wrote: “A substantial body of evidence shows that sunlight has health benefits and that these are independent of vitamin D, and thus, cannot be reproduced by oral supplementation.”2
THE ROLE OF SULFATE
Those who are familiar with my research know that I believe that keratinocyte cells in the skin, endothelial cells lining the walls of surface veins, and red blood cells are able to exploit the energy in sunlight by oxidizing hydrogen sulfide to make sulfate.3 In the skin, the sulfate is conjugated with both vitamin D and cholesterol, and this makes these otherwise water-insoluble sulfate molecules water-soluble. This greatly facilitates their transport in the blood, because they no longer have to be enclosed inside lipid particles like high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and low-density lipoprotein (LDL). Sunlight exposure thus produces cholesterol sulfate as well as vitamin D sulfate, and it is the cholesterol sulfate that offers many of the benefits that are seen epidemiologically in sunny places. In fact, I believe that systemic sulfate deficiency is a key driver behind many chronic diseases that are on the rise in the industrialized nations.
The sulfate that is produced in response to sunlight also supplies sulfate to the glycocalyx, the mesh of extracellular matrix glycoproteins that line the walls of all blood vessels. Red blood cells hand off cholesterol sulfate to the endothelial cells as they traverse the capillaries, and both the cholesterol and the sulfate are of vital importance to the endothelial cell’s health. The endothelial cells also can incorporate the sulfate they synthesize themselves, directly into the glycocalyx.
Sulfate in the glycocalyx helps to maintain the structured water in the exclusion zone, a layer of gelled water that coats the surface of all the blood vessels. Not only does the gel protect the blood vessel wall from oxidative and glycation damage, but it also provides a slick surface for frictionless traversal of the capillary by the red blood cells. And perhaps most importantly, it carries a negative charge, creating a battery that is likely the main source of electricity for the body. Light—and most especially infrared light—causes the exclusion zone water layer to expand dramatically, by as much as a factor of four.4 The electricity held in the battery grows in direct correspondence. Professor Gerald Pollack from the University of Washington in Seattle has popularized much of this story in his book, Cells, Gels, and the Engines of Life.5
SUNSCREEN USE AND MELANOMA—BOTH RISING
Most Americans rely heavily on sunscreen if they are outside for an extended period. Mothers well-trained by conventional messaging slather sunscreen on their children every few hours while at the beach, believing that this will keep their children safe from skin cancer, with no down side. Americans (and Australians) strongly believe that they are protecting themselves from skin cancer through this practice; but, in fact, they may be increasing their risk of skin cancer. Sunscreen interferes with the body’s natural mechanisms of sun protection, which have been perfected over hundreds of millions of years of life’s evolution on earth.
Given the quantity of advertising urging us to use sunscreen, people probably assume that there is plenty of evidence that sunscreen protects from skin cancer. If this is true, then it is hard to explain why melanoma prevalence has been steadily rising in tandem with the increased use of higher and higher sun-protection-factor (SPF) sunscreens over the past two decades.
A study published in 2009, which analyzed almost 300 million person-years of data over more than a ten-year period, concluded that the rate of skin melanoma increased by 3.1% per year from 1992 to 2004 in the United States.6