It’s hard to believe, but there was a time in the not too distant past when sunlight was not something we sought to avoid. On the contrary, we actively sought sunlight out, trusting (using?) it to cure a number of variety of illnesses.
Did you know that, to this day, there is a blatant absence of scientific proof that sunlight actually causes disease? Unfortunately, it seems most people have now been conditioned to believe the sun is simply harmful to us, leading only to cancer and other horrific diseases.
We slather SPF 60 on our bodies, covering ourselves head to toe, to ensure full protection from the suns supposedly deadly rays. Only those bold enough to defy the cryptic warnings of the sunscreen industry endorsed cancer specialists ever dare go out into the sun “unprotected”.
We believe these “foolish” ones are putting their very lives at risk. In reality, the truth is that a lack of sun exposure is in fact one of the greatest risk factors of disease.
The healing power of sunlight was very much favored by the medical community in the 1930’s. Sunlight therapy, or Heliotherapy, was used to treat and cure diseases from tuberculosis to rheumatoid arthritis. Patients suffering from: colitis, anemia, gout, cystitis, eczema, acne, psoriasis, herpes, asthma, sciatica and kidney problems all benefited from the healing power of the sun.
Heliotherapy was brought to its peak in the 1930’s by the famed and world-renowned. Heliotherapist, doctor and author, Dr. Auguste Rollier and his trusted colleague, Dr. Rosslet.
Their clinics were located in the town of Leysin, high in the Alps near Lake Geneva, Switzerland. Dr. Rollier had carefully selected this location for his clinics because they were 5,000 feet above sea level which allowed patients to absorb even more UV sunlight.
There were 165 different diseases in 1933 alone that were benefited from the suns rays, including tuberculosis. Heliotherapy was one of the most successful treatments for infectious diseases from the late 19th to the early 20th century. One especially interesting fact that Dr. Rollier discovered during this time, was that the powerful positive effects of the sunlight would not work if the patient was wearing sunglasses.
Dr. Rollier’s death in 1954, coupled with a pharmaceutical industry rapidly expanding in size, wealth, power and influence over the public, caused Heliotherapy to begin to fall by the wayside. By the 1960’s, man-made drugs had all but replaced standard medicines acceptance of the sun’s natural healing powers. In the early 1980’s, commercials and public announcements began surfacing warning of the dangers of sunlight. The public became increasingly weary of the idea of Sun Therapy.
Today, we are bombarded with misleading information regarding the dangers of the sun and its harmful effects, most notably skin cancer. UV radiation has actually decreased year over year for the past decade, while the number of cases of skin cancer in the U.S. has nearly doubled during the same period, starkly contradicting the theory that UV light is the cause behind the skin cancer epidemic.
Another interesting fact which contradicts the idea that UV light is the root cause of skin cancer is that Melanoma (which accounts for 75% of all skin cancer deaths) can occur in various parts of the body, such as the mouth, GI Tract, rectum, vulva and urinary bladder, which never see the sun.
There are presently a number of exciting advancements being made regarding the use of Sun Therapy. Dr. Bernard Ackerman, Founder and Director of the Ackerman Academy of Dermatology in NY, and recipient of the American Academy of Dermatology’s prestigious annual “Master Award”, has been a strong voice on the true causes of melanoma. Dr. Ackerman’s most recent work expresses strong skepticism to the claim that exposure to sunlight causes melanoma. It seems Dr. Ackerman is not alone in his beliefs. Today more and more doctors are starting to come back to the realization that sunlight is actually good for us.