Beauty is more than skin deep…Sunscreen found to generate harmful compounds that promote skin cancer

A team of researchers from the University of California has found that sunscreen can do more harm than good once it soaks into the skin, where it actually promotes the harmful compounds it is meant to protect against.

The research team found that three commonly used ultraviolet (UV) filters — octylmethoxycinnamate, benzophenone 3 and octocrylene — eventually soak into the deeper layers of the skin after their application, leaving the top skin layers vulnerable to sun damage. UV rays absorbed by the skin can generate harmful compounds called reactive oxygen species (ROS), which can cause skin cancer and premature aging. The researchers found that once the filters in sunscreen soak into the lower layers of skin, the filters react with UV light to create more damaging ROS.

The Cal team’s research is the first to indicate that sunscreen filters — intended to protect the skin from the very UV damage they apparently promote — have reacted in such a way.

The researchers found that the filters only become damaging when they are soaked into the skin and another layer of sunscreen is not applied.

“This research confirms what the natural health community has been saying for years: That sunscreens are harmful to your health,” said Mike Adams, a consumer health advocate. “The best sunscreen is actually achieved with a diet high in antioxidants,” he explained. “When you eat berries, superfoods and fresh produce on a regular basis, these natural antioxidants are utilized by your skin to protect you from excessive ultraviolet ray exposure. Sunburns are caused more by poor nutrition than by UV ray exposure.”

The idea that sunscreen prevents cancer is a myth. It’s a myth promoted by a profit-seeking tag-team effort between the cancer industry and the sunscreen industry. The sunscreen industry makes money by selling lotion products that actually contain cancer-causing chemicals. It then donates a portion of that money to the cancer industry through non-profit groups like the American Cancer Society which, in turn, run heart-breaking public service ads urging people to use sunscreen to “prevent cancer.”

The scientific evidence, however, shows quite clearly that sunscreen actually promotes cancer by blocking the body’s absorption of ultraviolet radiation, which produces vitamin D in the skin. Vitamin D, as recent studies have shown, prevents up to 77 of ALL cancers in women (breast cancer, colon cancer, cervical cancer, lung cancer, brain tumors, multiple myeloma… you name it). Meanwhile, the toxic chemical ingredients used in most sunscreen products are actually carcinogenic and have never been safety tested or safety approved by the FDA. They get absorbed right through the skin (a porous organ that absorbs most substances it comes into contact with) and enter the bloodstream.

The benefits of sunscreen are a myth. Proponents say sunscreen prevents sunburn, but in fact, the real cause of sunburn is not merely UV exposure: It is a lack of antioxidant nutrition. Start eating lots of berries and microalgae (spirulina, astaxanthin, blue-green algae, etc.), and you’ll build up an internal sunscreen that will protect your skin from sunburn from the inside out. Sunburn is actually caused by nutritional deficiencies that leave the skin vulnerable to DNA mutations from radiation, but if you boost your nutrition and protect your nervous system with plant-based nutrients, you’ll be naturally resistant to sunburn. The same nutrients, by the way, also protect the optic nerve and eyes from radiation damage. That’s why the consumption of berries and carrots, for example, has historically been associated with healthy eye function. (The same nutrients that protect the eyes also protect the skin.)

If sunscreen is so bad for humans, you might ask, then why do so many doctors recommend using it? This might be hard for you to believe, but it wasn’t too long ago that doctors routinely recommended smoking cigarettes, too. The Journal of the American Medical Association, in fact, ran numerous ads promoting Camels as “recommended by more doctors than any other cigarette!” Doctors talked up the “benefits” of smoking cigarettes, urging people to start smoking in order to improve brain function or even — get this — make their teeth stronger!

The truth is doctors are easily influenced by commercial interests and can be readily convinced to recommend practically any product, no matter how toxic, unhealthy or deadly to consumers. Just look at how many doctors wrote prescriptions for Vioxx, for example, after being visited by a Vioxx drug rep pushing it as a “miracle drug” for joint pain.