Prestige issue 262, May 2015
For billions of years, the sun has been ruling the world in which we live. Without the sun the earth would not exist and also us. All life on earth is a chemical reaction that burns and transforms the sun’s energy. Many phenomena in our bodies and our minds are related to the action of the sun. For thousands of years humans have worshiped the sun as the father of nature. The Egyptians called it Ra, the Greeks Phoebus and the Slavs Bog-Yarilo. Nevertheless it is the holiday or rather tanning worshipers who replaced the respectful friends of this star today. However doctors constantly remind us that the sun is not only a pleasant source of warmth and tan, it can also cause severe and even fatal diseases. The star, nowadays, is no longer divine, caution has taken the place of respect.
Nuxe protective creams with various degrees to protect the skin against sun damage. Cellular anti-aging protection. © Nuxe
It is true that the sun is a condition for health and beauty, but its power is such that with a few more or less light, health transforms into disease and beauty is lost. In fact, our body is a marvelous machine that can convert solar radiation into life. How?
- These radiations carry energy, condition of life. The body assimilates this energy, and the first level of transformation is on the skin that is both a protection and a filter. This is the role of this surface that should only let pass when everything is normal, the sun’s rays that the body can and should use, that is to say luminous radiation, infrared and ultraviolet.
- The skin first uses the luminous rays of the sun. It is the role of the retina of the eye that is the receptive station of these rays. Due to its chemical structure, it selects radiations necessary to the view. The skin also uses invisible radiations from the sun, in other words the infrared rays which give the heat and the ultraviolet rays which are the real life. These are turned into valuable vitamin D, essential to the body. Vitamin D raises the level of phosphorus in the blood and allows the perfect assimilation of calcium in the food. These ultraviolet radiations win throughout the body through the capillaries under the skin. Also, ultraviolet, through the retina, reach the pituitary gland in the brain (the regulatory gland of all other glands), which they stimulate the operation.
Is there a good and a bad sun?
Is the sun a drug or a poison? In fact, it is both one and the other. For each individual there is a good and a bad sun according to the state of his health and his constitution.
The Good Sun
Of all the natural therapies, the sun is the simplest and most universal. It straightens failing bones, relaxes the nerves, soothes pains, heals wounds and fights many germs.
- Solar cure often heals pains. Indeed, it gives positive results, and sometimes critical in the treatment of operations. It consolidates fractures. It vigorously fights skin diseases such as furunculosis, psoriasis, and rickets. Solar rays act in a spectacular way on the general state of anemic, convalescents, overworked and hypertension. Research shows that ultraviolet soothe the discomforts caused by pregnancy and at the same time promote development of baby during his intra-uterine existence!
- The sun helps hair growth. According to experts, the hair grows faster during the sunny months.
- The sun produces Vitamin D. There are in the industrial cities of northern Europe, and in the slums of South America, generations of rickety. It is the deficiency of the sun that causes this disease. It deprives the body of two elements essential for its formation: calcium and phosphorus. In contact with the skin, ultraviolet rays are converted to vitamin D to promote the increase of calcium and phosphorus in the blood.
- The sun acts on blood circulation. Infrared has a vaso-dilating action on the capillaries running almost on edge. This expansion helps improve and intensify the exchange between the oxygen of the air and blood.
- Thanks to the sun there is rain. The sun causes evaporation of the oceans forming clouds. And thanks to the sun there are rivers, lakes and waterfalls that create hydropower.
- It is the sun which also makes the vegetation. Plants are chemical factories that convert radiation from the sun in nutrients essential to life. This transformation occurs thanks to chlorophyll, a substance contained in all plants. Nature, according to chemists, intercepts the luminous rays that flood the earth and stores this elusive force while transforming it. It covered the crust of living organisms that capture sunlight. These organisms are simply plants.
- The human being is nourished by the sun because all the food comes directly or indirectly from plants.
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The Bad Sun
It is true that white clothes refer infrared rays better than the black clothes, however the clothes never have a surface flat enough to act as a reflector.
- Solar allergies, such as urticaria and itching, are manifested by an increase in the sensitivity of the skin that varies in its intensity and shape depending on the nature of the reaction. Burns may even result.
- Solar cancer is due to the proliferation of skin cells promoted by ultraviolet rays. Some oncologists argue that solar rays are not carcinogenic as many think. For them, cancer has the role of a developer. Under the action of these rays, skin cancer in formation «explode». This externalization would detect and treat them in time. The action of the sun would be beneficial in this case. Note that the sun holidays or weekends unless huge excess, cannot cause cancer. While marine and agricultural workers neglecting years long of their work under the intense rays of the sun, any anti-radiation protection, could be victims of this solar cancer.
- Sunburn, a general term for simultaneously sunburn and heat stroke, is generally due to ultraviolet light. • Sunburn is a burn to the first or second degree caused by a very prolonged exposure. Ultraviolet are able, between noon and four o’clock to violently attack and very little time the surface layer and the deeper part of the skin, the epidermis and the dermis. This results in redness and occasionally blisters. When the burns are extensive, they may be accompanied by fever and headaches. This certainly requires the intervention of a doctor. • Heat stroke itself is due to infrared which, raising the ambient atmospheric heat and causing an increase in humidity, are among the tired individual or subject to intense muscular activity, hinder evacuation of sweat and block the elimination of toxins. • The solar insolation is a serious accident. Its symptoms are easily identifiable: extreme thirst, headache, thorax, tinnitus, disturbed heartbeat, general weakness. There are cases where insolated is broke without preliminary signs. He collapses and can slip into a coma. His condition requires emergency transportation to the nearest hospital.
Nuxe, after-sun fresh milk, water flowers and sunshine. Prolongs the tan, repairs and soothes. Face and body. © Nuxe
Tanning
Natural protection
Tanning is not just the fact to lie in the sun, and then get a blushing tan. The phenomenon is more complex, it in fact takes place in more than one step. Ultraviolet rays, which cause tanning alone, attack the skin, zigzag through the epidermis and reach one of its lower layers called «germ». This is where will develop biochemical reactions that cause browning. In this germinal layer cells under the action of solar energy, produce a substance called melanin, the brown pigment having the property to tattoo epidermal cells. This is the melanin that gives a sought dark hue since Gabrielle Chanel invented, they say, fashion of tanned women.
It’s to better resist the aggression of the ultraviolet rays that the skin turns brown. The melanin produced is a natural screen against these rays. When the attack is limited, it is a beneficial stimulant: combustions accelerate, the nervous system is balanced, the tissues oxygenate and toxins are neutralized. However, when the attack of ultraviolet is violent and prolonged, the whole body is threatened with serious disturbances and sometimes fatal.
- The sun bath is a more or less risky adventure that you can not begin without proper protection. How to prepare for tanning? Dermatologists, in order to allow us to effectively resist ultraviolet, developed, besides the protective care products, simple schemes designed to prepare the body to this summer fight. Fifteen days before the sun exhibition, they advise to avoid excess causing a tired liver recommending a good intake of fresh fruit and vegetable juices.
- Too much sun causes skin aging. Indeed, a careful preparation for tanning cannot however protect the skin from burning and premature aging of the skin. An exhibition in high doses in the sun, without protection undoubtedly favors wrinkles.
- Oils and creams are indispensable. To protect against this aging and also to escape sunburns, the natural screen formed by melanin is insufficient. It is essential to use protective creams or oils based on salicylic derivatives, anti-ultraviolet. These products treat and moisturize the skin at the same time, protecting it from premature aging. They are a chemical filter stopping dangerous radiation but letting the tanning rays.
Is there a better age to withstand the sun?
The maximum tolerance to the sun is curiously around 4 years old, but also during adolescence and approaching fifty. Ultraviolet rays do not have the same effect on all people.
The solar action depending on regions
The Mediterranean sun makes people optimistic. It is peaceful and quite balanced. However this is a harmful sun to people suffering heart diseases because it seems that abnormal radiation acts directly on blood vessels and arteries by promoting the formation of blood clots occluding the coronary artery and causing a heart attack. These rays are also bad for the lungs, obese and underweight subjects. However, it is good to soothe overworked intellectuals, nervous and excited.
The sun of the North is high in ultraviolet, it is suitable for anemic people, physical overworked, adolescents affected by puberty. It is not recommended for nervous people.
The sun of the mountains over 1,200m altitude is absolutely against-indicated to people suffering from heart diseases, with hypertension and renal problems. It is perfect for anemic, against the melancholy, asthma, lung patients, not the tubercular cases.
