Health Matters: The sunlight on your body

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Trust Marandure
A MIRACLE factory is at work just beneath your skin. And when the ultraviolet rays of the sun touch the skin, the factory sets to work.

It is a most marvellous system, and, without it, you could not remain alive an hour.

There are millions of red corpouscles constantly flowing through very small blood vessels throughout every part of 3,000 square inches of your skin. And there are also tiny oil glands just beneath the skin which biochemists call sterols. As sunlight strikes them, substances within them, called ergosterols, are irradiated and transformed into vitamin D. Carried to all parts of your body, it enables you to have strong bones, teeth, and nails.

Every living thing in our world is dependent upon the sun. Without sunshine, nothing could live. Sunlight is composed of energy wavelengths of various types. We will here focus our attention on the visible rays, along with the infrared and ultraviolet rays. In this brief report-you will learn part of this miracle of what sunlight can do for you — and how it can bring you better health and even a happier outlook life.

In 1877, two researchers, Downes and Blunt, discovered that sunlight can destroy harmful bacteria. Today, it is used to treat bacterial infections. Sunlight on the body dramatically lowers high blood pressure, decreases blood cholesterol, lowers excessively high blood sugars, and increases white blood cells.

Adequate sunlight on your body will lower your respiratory rate and will cause your breathing to be slower, deeper, and even easier.

Your resting heart rate will decrease, and after exercise it will return to normal much more quickly. Sunshine increases the capacity of the blood to carry more oxygen and take it to your body tissues. Even a single exposure to the ultraviolet light in sunlight will greatly increase the oxygen content of your blood. And this effect will continue for several days. Bronchial asthma patients who could hardly breathe, were able to inhale freely after a sunbath.

It is of interest that many of these beneficial effects of sunlight are heightened if a person combines sunbathing with a regular program of physical exercise. For example fatigue and exhaustion tend to be lessened and the capacity for work is increased. It is now known that part of this is due to an increase in glycogen content of the blood and muscles following sunlight and exercise.

The strength of the heart is steadied and deepened. The pulse rate is lowered because the heart muscle is pumping more blood at each beat. This enables your heart to rest more between beats. And the blood output is increased by an average of 39 percent for several days after a sunbath. Many people worry about their blood pressure, yet regularly sunlight on the body lowers it. Sunbaths alone will lower blood pressure by an average of eight percent. Combined with exercise, it is lowered 15 percent.

And there are those that worry about their blood sugar because they are diabetic. It has been discovered that exposure to sunshine has an insulin-like effect on the body-it lowers the blood sugar. And it does it in exactly the right proportion.

Those who have no diabetic problem experience almost no change in blood sugar while diabetics have a striking lowering of it. It is now known that this lowering is caused by the fact that sunlight on the body causes glycogen [stored sugar] to be increased throughout the body, enabling the blood sugar to be lowered.

Higher storage levels of glycogen result in more body energy for longer stretches of physical activity, with more endurance and less fatigue. [Warning — a diabetic taking sunbaths should try reducing his insulin intake, lest he inject too much.]

And there is stress. We all encounter tensions and problems throughout the day. Sunlight can help you more easily glide through the day.

A deepened sense of well-being results and better sleep comes at night. You feel better and live better.

Because you are more relaxed, the crises of life are met with less difficulty. Sunlight on the body both calms the nerves and increases adrenalin. This relaxation is not merely mental, it is physical also. Both gastric and duodenal ulcer patients have been found to improve under the beneficial effects of sunshine.

The wealth of new scientific insights on the restorative power of sunlight continues to unfold. Sunlight lowers blood cholesterol, an excess of blood cholesterol is one of the problems leading to heart and artery disease. The basic fact underlying this truth back to year 1904, when it was discovered that sunlight changes the cholesterol just under the skin into vitamin D, cholesterol from the blood is sent to take its place, thus lowering the cholesterol in the blood.

Researchers now know that when cholesterol is removed from the blood,- cholesterol stored within the plaques deposited on the artery walls takes its place. The result is a beneficial reduction of the dangerous deposits that accompany hardening of the arteries and lead to strokes. Two hours after a sunbath, an average of 13 percent reduction in human blood cholesterol occurs.

Research carried out in 1970 in Russia disclosed that sunbaths help people with hardening of the arteries of the brain. Their improved mental performance and memory indicates that those harmful blood vessels deposits were lessened by the exposure to sunlight.

Incidentally, one insight that came out of this and other Russian research was the fact that patients were helped more by frequent short exposures to sunlight than by infrequent longer sunbaths. Proof of this was shown in the electrocardiograms- almost twice as good in those receiving shorter, more frequent sunshine of their bodies.

Dramatic evidence of the importance of sunlight on the body is to be found in the fact that dark –skinned races suffer more from certain diseases than light-skinned races. Of all the races, the black race is the most susceptible to rickets.

The solution is vitamin D, but in order to manufacture it in the body, blacks must have their bodies in the sunlight more than the light-skinned races.

Because blacks require more sunlight on their bodies for good health than whites, blacks tend to have more jaundice, high blood pressure, tuberculosis, and diabetes.

Streptococcal infections have been found to be reduced when sunlight regularly reaches the skin. In 1929, Dr Ude introduced sunbathing into America for the treatment of erysipelas [a streptococcal infection of the skin].

In 1938, penicillin was discovered and many researchers turned their eyes from sunlight to the wonder drugs. But the many dangerous side effects of these medicinal drugs are less likely to be found in taking a sunbath.

Fungus infections of the feet and toe are especially helped by sunlight. So many different bacteria and viruses exist that it is neither wise nor safe to attempt vaccination against them all.

But sunlight on the body is part of the best solution to many of these problems. Infectious diseases include many physical problems ranging from the common cold to flu,- and even the dangerous spinal meningitis.

How very important it is that we make  sure that we frequently obtain the vital sunlight that our bodies so much need in order to maintain good health.

Trust Marandure is a naturopathy practitioner based in Bulawayo. He can be contacted on 0772 482 382 or email tgmarandure @yahoo.com

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