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1. Sunscreen Health Risks: Serious Dangers and How to Avoid Them
2. Can't Sleep?
3. 4 Myths about Aging
4. Nerves Keeping You Awake? Get Help Sleeping
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Sunscreen Health Risks: Serious Dangers and How to Avoid Them By: Michael Lam, MD, MPH; Carrie Lam, MD; Jeremy Lam, MD
Avoiding sunscreen health risks - at a time when the ozone layer has been depleted and the risk of skin cancer has increased manyfold - is not easy. If you don't apply sunscreen, you risk exposing yourself to damaging ultraviolet (UV) radiation. If you do, you risk allowing potentially carcinogenic ingredients that go into sunscreen to penetrate your skin and enter your blood.
The ozone layer is the part of the atmosphere that protects us from cosmic radiation. The fact that it's been depleted has many negative consequences on our health, such as an increased incidence of skin and eye conditions.
To reduce the negative consequences of UV radiation, we are advised never to be in the sun unless we're wearing sunscreen because it helps prevent the sun's ultraviolet UV radiation from reaching the skin.
Unfortunately, sunscreen comes with some serious side effects, and to avoid sunscreen health risks, you first have to understand how UV radiation affects your health and why it's important to protect yourself from it. But even more importantly, you need to know that sunscreen, which is supposed to prevent skin cancer, can have many cancerogenic agents.
Dangers of UV Radiation
Skin cancer has become one of the most common types of cancer, and a major risk factor is prolonged exposure to UV radiation.
Sunscreen is a product that is applied topically and that can absorb or reflect some of the UV radiation, protecting you from sunburn. It's available as a gel, lotion, spray, ointment, cream, and wax stick.
There are two types of UV light:
UVA: associated with skin aging - This type of radiation easily penetrates windows and cloud cover and is the main type of light used in tanning beds. Although slightly less intense than UVB, it penetrates your skin more deeply. Long-term exposure to UVA causes genetic damage to skin cells leading to cell mutation and cancer. The tan you get when sunbathing is the skin's attempt to prevent further damage by darkening.
Do you still think getting a tan is healthy?
UVB: associated with skin burning - UVB rays are particularly damaging at high altitudes or on reflective surfaces such as snow or ice. Although they do not penetrate glass, overexposure causes tan, sunburn, and blistering.
Sunscreen Health Risks
Sun protection is essential for the prevention of skin cancer, sunburn, and premature aging, especially given the depleted ozone layer. However, although there is a lot of debate going on, it is no longer a secret that most chemical-based sunscreens come with potentially dangerous side effects.
Sunscreen health risks come from certain ingredients that go into sunscreens such as tetracyclines, sulfa drugs, and phenothiazines.
Generally speaking, sunscreens function as either mineral or chemical UV filters.
Chemical sunscreens include a different combination of two to six of the following active ingredients: oxybenzone, avobenzone, octisalate, octocrylene, homosalate, and octinoxate.
Healthier mineral sunscreens are based on zinc oxide and/or titanium dioxide.
Oxybenzone is a particularly problematic ingredient and is found in about 70 percent of all sunscreens.
Combined with other chemicals, it has a disruptive effect on hormone function, can cause cell damage, increases the risk of breast cancer, and promotes skin tumors and lesions.
A recent study showed that within a single day of sunscreen application, the level of toxic chemicals exceeded the maximum allowable limit. In subsequent days, as the person continued to use sunscreen, the blood levels of these chemicals increased, suggesting that they easily accumulate in the blood over time.
How to Avoid Sunscreen Health Risks
Is it possible to protect your skin from damaging UV radiation without exposing it to unhealthy chemicals that most sunscreens are made of?
There are natural sunscreen alternatives that come with no harmful side effects. These are based on natural oils, plant extracts, and certain nutrients.
Oils - According to a 2011 study, sesame oil can resist 30 percent of UV rays, while coconut, peanut, olive, and cottonseed oil block out about 20 percent. So, although natural and perfectly safe to use even on children, these oils have a relatively low Sun Protection Factor (SPF). This makes them ideal for short periods in the sun, but not for day-long exposure to UV radiation.
Aloe vera - Aloe vera gel is an excellent natural remedy for skin damage both as a preventive measure and after the skin has been damaged.
Astaxanthin - Astaxanthin is a naturally occurring red pigment found in algae, salmon, trout, and shrimp and is super rich in carotenoids. This antioxidant is powerful protection from sun damage, so by including these foods in your diet, you can avoid sunscreen health risks.
The reason astaxanthin is more effective than a topically applied sunscreen is that it accumulates in all the layers of the skin, while sunscreen can reach only the outermost layers.
Mineral sunscreens - These sunscreens are made with zinc oxide and titanium dioxide and are very effective and safe protection from UV radiation.
So, avoiding sunscreen health risk is possible with some forward planning and opting for alternative sun protection methods. The best alternative to sunscreens seems to be a combination of using natural oils with taking astaxanthin supplements for at least three months before your vacation.
Skin Products, Damage, and Repair
Woman Applying sunscreen and Sunscreen RiskOne of the main dangers of unprotected UV exposure is that such damage is cumulative and increases your skin cancer risk over time. This means that if you only occasionally expose your skin to the sun without any protection, your body will easily repair the DNA damage in your skin cells.
However, if this is how you normally spend time outdoors, the unrepaired damage will build up over time, eventually causing malignant tumors.
However, using UV protection without being aware of sunscreen health risks is ignoring the very real risks of potentially very harmful chemicals.
Sadly, despite all the benefits, sunscreen is a toxin which we have liberally applied to ourselves and our children for the past 50 years. The side effects of prolonged sunscreen use have only recently started to emerge, and we now know that most of the ingredients that go into sunscreen are not considered safe for one's health.
The skin is our largest organ, and, being porous, it easily absorbs whatever is applied to it. This is how we, usually unknowingly, allow many different kinds of toxins to get into our system through the skin. The most common ways we expose our skin to toxins is through the household cleaning agents, cosmetics, sunscreen, and using synthetic pesticides without adequate protection.
Although many pathogens are successfully prevented from penetrating the skin, those that do manage to get through are quickly absorbed into your system. The same goes for anything you apply on your skin or whatever you expose your skin to – sooner or later, it ends up inside your body. When you know that the majority of skincare products are a combination of carcinogenic chemicals and allergens, it becomes clear how much debris our detox organs have to deal with on a day-to-day basis.
How To Help Your Body Detoxify
Fortunately, your body has a perfect mechanism for toxin elimination. It's called the NeuroEndoMetabolic (NEM) Stress Response, and the toxins we absorb through the skin, lungs, or gut, are just another type of stressor.
The Detoxification circuit of the NEM stress response model is comprised of the liver, the extracellular matrix (ECM), and the immune system. Together, they work to remove foreign substances and reactive metabolites that come as a result of stress.
Of all the organs involved in detox, the liver plays the most important part. It works hard to help you stay healthy and fit, and its key role is to process the toxins that find their way into the body, so they can be expelled through urine and bile.
However, if the liver becomes overloaded and unable to adequately filter the blood and produce enzymes that destroy toxins, they will start accumulating in your blood and gradually spread throughout the body.
Thanks to the recent scientific advances, we now know that sunscreen health risks are increased manifold if you use the mainstream sunscreens, most of which contain oxybenzone which turns out to be very toxic to both us and the marine ecosystem.
If you've been using sunscreen regularly for many years, but your body is healthy and strong, you have nothing to worry about, as your liver has probably been successfully getting rid of the toxins, keeping the sunscreen health risks to a minimum.
However, if your detoxification system is compromised, such as by an unhealthy diet, long-term illness, or chronic stress, then your organs may be full of accumulated toxins.
Sunscreen health risks can be avoided or reduced by a strong immune system and a healthy liver. To improve your liver health and boost the toxin elimination process, try not to overload your liver, use only natural cosmetics and cleaning products, increase water intake to boost urination, take care of your gut health to avoid constipation, and engage in activities which promote sweating as often as you can.
Improve your Liver
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Natural Cleaning Products
Can’t Sleep?
8 Different Reasons for Poor Sleep by Dr. Eric Berg
We all know how a night of restless sleep makes us groggy, tired, or even difficult to be around. But there’s even more that’s affected from your memory and your metabolism to your blood sugars. To help get over your lack of sleep, I have eight different reasons for why you might be sleeping poorly and how to finally get a good night’s rest.
See Dr. Berg on Poor Sleep
Tired of tossing and turning at night? The problem might be that your body temperature is hotter than what it should be. Here’s how sleeping in a colder room will raise your melatonin levels to help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep.
Problem of Temperature
4 Myths About Aging
Not long ago, most folks – including scientists – believed that our bodies simply wear out as we age. And that does seem to be sort of a common sense way of looking at it. So most of us resigned ourselves to the march of time, which meant achy joints, fragile bones, withering muscles, failing eyesight, wrinkled skin and unreliable memory.
But before you start wallowing in this defeatist mentality, take a look at some inspiring new research that proves you can stem the tide of physical aging.
Below we’ll debunk four common myths about how the body ages …
#1 Myth: You can’t escape creaky, achy joints
It turns out that not exercising is one of the main mistakes that make painful joints inevitable. Researchers at Monash University School in Australia observed 176 women aged 40 to 67 with no clinical osteoarthritis or history of significant knee injury1.
The women all had magnetic resonance imaging on their dominant knee to assess tibial cartilage volume and defects. The participants also completed a questionnaire to determine exercise habits. Researchers found that those who exercised at least once every two weeks for 20 minutes or more had more healthy cartilage in their knees. This study suggests that people who are physically active are less likely to develop arthritis.
#2 Myth: Muscles will wither
There is a bit of truth here, as it’s normal to experience loss of muscle mass (a condition called sarcopenia) after age 40. This is largely because aging muscle becomes populated with malfunctioning mitochondria, the little powerhouses found in all cells. When mitochondria tank, muscle cells waste away and fat cells set up housekeeping.
But this doesn’t have to be everyone’s fate! An important study2 published in Public Library Science offers hope. Canadian researchers biopsied muscle from active and sedentary adults between 53 and 75 years old. It turned out the couch potatoes’ muscles had few robust mitochondria. In contrast, active adults’ muscles featured almost as many thriving mitochondria as you’d find in much younger adults.
And here’s the good news: the study found just about any exercise can improve and even reverse the signs of aging in muscles.
#3 Myth: It’s too late to benefit from exercise
Nothing could be further from the truth! In the oft cited Nurses’ Health Study3, researchers surveyed more than 13,500 women on their lifestyle habits. The scientists found that even if you don’t become active until middle age, exercise still greatly improves your odds of aging without cognitive or physical issues or developing a chronic disease.
In more good news, researchers in the United States and Europe have deduced that just about any kind of activity, at any age, helps preserve telomeres – the caps on the ends of chromosomes in your cells. When these caps become shorter, the cell stops dividing and dies. Exercise can help maintain telomere length, which potentially extends a cell’s life span. Even better, research shows that even moderate physical activity can provide this protective effect.
#4 Myth: Bones are more likely to break with age
Not necessarily! You see, researchers now believe inactivity is the biggest threat to bone health. Indeed, it’s proven that the best type of activity for bone health is weight-bearing exercise, which promotes formation of new bone.
Multiple studies4 with older men and women who performed weight-bearing exercise, or wore weighted vests, showed increases in bone mineral density, bone strength and bone size. In other studies5, researchers found that exercise can also help protect against bone loss in post-menopausal women, including those with osteoporosis or osteopenia.
Now, you don’t have to become a gym rat – merely walking is a weight-bearing exercise! Using exercise bands or carrying light weights while you walk will give you additional benefit, but proceed with caution as apparently some people injure themselves.
1. Menopause. 14(5):830-834, SEP 2007
2. Melov S, Tarnopolsky MA, Beckman K,
Felkey K, Hubbard A (2007)
Resistance Exercise Reverses Aging i
n Human Skeletal Muscle. PLoS ONE 2(5): e465.
3. “Nurses’ Health Studies“.
The Nurses’ Health Study. 2016-08-16.
Retrieved 2017-07-17.
4. J Biomech Eng. 2015 Jan;137(1). doi: 0.1115/1.4028847.
5. https://cals.arizona.edu/cpan/files/
Metcalfe%20ACSM%20final%20article.pdf
Nerves Keeping You Awake? Get Help Sleeping
Sometimes the sensation (burning, coldness, numbness, tingling or pain) from your nerves can keep you up at night.
If you are having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, there is a safe and effective way to help your body get the sleep you need on a daily basis, and it's not a drug!
Passion flower is an ingredient of the Sleep Support Formula and is widely used by herbalists and natural health practitioners around the world.
Passionflower contains active ingredients that help to relieve anxiety, relax and calm the individual. This acts to reduce day-to-day stress that can often make it harder to get a good night's sleep.
The Sleep Support Formula is specifically designed to support physical relaxation and calmness, to help you get a restful night's sleep, and it can be safely used as often as needed.
You can learn more and order the Sleep Support Formula using this secure link
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Sidebar:
What Does Vitamin C Do for Your Nerves?
IMPORTANT - FOR A SHORT TIME ONLY: Save over 6 dollars on your next bottle of Vitamin C!
Sorbitol (a form of sugar) travels to certain parts of the body where it builds up. These parts of the body are the lens of the eye where it forms a white milky film called cataracts, and the sciatic nerve (the big nerve that runs down your leg) where it can cause nerve damage (nerve pain).
Evidence indicates that taking 2,000 mg a day of vitamin C may reduce the production of sorbitol and help strip sorbitol out of the body.
Camu camu is one of the highest known sources of natural vitamin C. Research indicates camu camu contains up to 56 times more vitamin C than a lemon and 50 times more vitamin C than an orange.
Most Camu Camu sold on the market today is sold as camu camu powder in bags, or in capsules or tablets. 20 percent of camu camu powder is actual vitamin C.
If you have 500 mg of camu camu powder in a capsule - you are only getting 100 mg of Vitamin C.
If there are 60 capsules in a bottle, then the total amount of Vitamin C you would get in that bottle is 6,000 mg.
Often these bottles are sold at around eighteen to twenty dollars a bottle.
We are different.
Each of our camu camu vitamin C tablets contains 200 mg of actual vitamin C. Each tablet contains 1,000mg of camu camu powder.
Our bottle has 120 tablets. The total amount of vitamin C you get in our bottle is 24,000 mg.
A bottle of RHP Vitamin C from Camu Camu is normally 32.20 - Right now it is only 25.76 a bottle!
This is far more than twice the amount of Vitamin C, at more than half the cost!
(And, if we kept the price in line with what others are charging on the market - the RHP Vitamin C from Camu Camu should cost 72.00 a bottle!)
Find out more and get your Vitamin C
You can always call us at (888) 758-5590 or (818) 252-1038.
We're here for you.
If you have any questions about our Nerve Support Formula, please email or call us at (888) 758-5590 (US & Canada) or (818) 252-1038.
We want to make sure you get the results you are looking for.
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