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As warmer weather approaches (yay!), it’s time to start thinking about digging out the kids’ clothes, bathing suits, and flip flops. This is also my cue to start getting my skin ready for the sun.
Why not wait until the first beach day? Because I now eat my sunscreen rather than just wear it.
I’ve long been fed up with the ingredients in sunscreen (more on that in this post) and believe it often does more harm than good. The more I researched the more I found that exposure to the sun isn’t a problem (it’s actually a benefit) if you feed your skin the right nutrients to get it ready for sun exposure.
The sun isn’t the problem, which is why I take a different approach. I get safe sun exposure and protect my skin from the inside out. (And of course, cover up or get out of the sun when my skin has had enough!)
Why the Sun Isn’t the Enemy
There seems to be an underlying idea that sun exposure = skin cancer and that sunscreen = protection from skin cancer. But the research doesn’t back this up. In fact, it may susggest the opposite. Think about this: Skin cancer rates are rising despite more sunscreen use and reduced sun exposure in recent decades.
Science backs up this approach. A 2016 review in the journal Dermato-Endocrinology concluded that while prevention of skin cancer is important, being afraid of the sun isn’t a good answer. From their findings:
This review considers the studies that have shown a wide range health benefits from sun/UV exposure. These benefits include among others various types of cancer, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer disease/dementia, myopia and macular degeneration, diabetes and multiple sclerosis. The message of sun avoidance must be changed to acceptance of non-burning sun exposure sufficient to achieve serum 25(OH)D concentration of 30 ng/mL or higher in the sunny season and the general benefits of UV exposure beyond those of vitamin D. (emphasis added)
This is the reason I don’t avoid the sun, but rather make a point to get sun exposure every day. I also avoid sunscreen for the most part, and just get out of the sun or cover up when I have had enough sun exposure for the day.
How I Stopped Burning
Here was my dilemma…
I’m partially Irish-Scottish (which is Latin for very fair skinned!) and had always burned. In fact, even moderate sun exposure would leave me with a pinkish glow rather than a tan … until several years ago.
The research showed the importance of sun exposure for adequate levels of vitamin D and many other aspects of health. Wearing sunscreen greatly reduces vitamin D production, so that wasn’t the answer. I decided to follow the research and start protecting my skin from the inside out. And it worked.
I started working in the garden for hours at a time during the heat of the day without burning. We also went to Florida for vacation and I was at the beach for 4 hours between 11-3 with no sunscreen and I didn’t burn… at all!
To those of you blessed with olive skin (like my husband), this may not seem like a big deal, but to me, this is huge! Finally I no longer look like the pale-stepchild among my Italian in-laws for the first time.
How I Eat My Sunscreen with Diet + Supplements
Just as a poor diet has a negative effect on skin and overall health, a real food diet may offer protection from various health problems, including sun-related ones. Fortunately, the diet and lifestyle factors that are good for the skin have great benefits for general health as well.
Note: This is what worked for me and is in no way medical or dermatological advice. Please do you own research, know your own skin, and find what works best for you.
Here’s how I start preparing my skin for safe sun exposure this summer:
1. Eat a Real Food Diet With Enough Good Fats
A large part of my natural sun protection is eating an anti-inflammatory diet. To make sure the body has the proper building blocks for healthy skin and to reduce inflammation, I consume enough healthy saturated, monounsaturated, and omega-3 fats while avoiding polyunsaturated fatty acids and high omega-6 vegetable oils.
I focus on making sure that my diet is high in micronutrients from vegetables, omega-3s, and fat-soluble vitamins from fish, and monounsaturated and saturated fats from plant and animal sources.
This type of diet will also be beneficial for many other health conditions, and if you’ve been a Wellness Mama reader for any length of time, you know the drill:
Avoid:
- processed foods
- vegetable oils (this is the most important for sun exposure)
- grains
- sugars
Consume:
- healthy sources of saturated fats and monounsaturated fats
- foods rich in omega-3s (fish, etc.)
- lots of leafy greens
- 2+ tablespoons of tomato paste daily (I sometimes add this in for the lycopene and skin protection)
2. Eat Antioxidants
Just by avoiding grains and omega-6 oils as well as focusing on proteins, fats, and vegetables instead, your diet will be higher in antioxidants than the standard American diet. Even real food “treats” like berries and dark chocolate are packed with antioxidants.
Antioxidants help reduce inflammation and free radicals. Research has shown a strong protective effect of antioxidants against inflammation and skin damage.
3. Up the Vitamin D
I’ve noticed the biggest difference in how I feel from optimizing two things: omega-3 consumption and vitamin D levels. I talked about the importance of omega-3s above. Through blood testing, I found that my 25(OH)D level (one measure of vitamin D) was below 25 ng/mL. That was well below the recommendation for pregnant and nursing women and well below the 65 ng/mL recommended by some doctors for optimal health.
Through years of experimenting and continual testing, I found that in order to get my levels above 30 ng/mL I had to get sun exposure and take supplemental vitamin D. Now, with my levels in the 50-60 ng/mL range, my thyroid is doing great and I feel the best I’ve ever felt. I also don’t get sunburned any more!
Why it works: This is a logical if you think about it. Melanin, the dark pigment that we get when we tan, is produced to shield the skin from further UV exposure by providing a type of barrier. This is why those with darker skin need more sun that those with fairer skin to get the same amount of vitamin D.
When the body has enough vitamin D, it will start producing melanin to keep from getting too much. There is evidence that optimizing vitamin D levels through sun exposure and even through supplementation will help the body produce melanin faster and retain it longer. Of course, this is a genetic and very personalized issue that is best handled with testing and the help of a qualified practitioner.
4. Gradual Sun Exposure
Seems simple and logical, but moderate and safe sun exposure has the most benefits for vitamin D levels. Sunburn is never good! I always get less sun exposure than I think I need at first and work up really slowly to avoid burning.
5. Natural Sun Protection
With the recent research on the benefits of sun exposure and the potential harmful substances in many sunscreens, I choose natural ways to protect from the sun once I’ve gotten enough exposure at any time. My first (and best) option is just to cover up or get in the shade if possible. A hat and shirt are reusable, don’t contain harmful chemicals, and do a great job of protecting from excess sun exposure.
If I have to be outside in the bright sun for extended periods of time and can’t seek shade or cover up I’ll sometimes use a natural homemade sunscreen or an EWG-recommended sunscreen.
6. Supplement Support
This time of year, I also start taking a specific regimen of supplements to help reduce inflammation and improve sun tolerance. I’m not a doctor and don’t play one on the Internet, and I’m only sharing the supplements I personally take and why. Check with your doctor before making any health or supplement changes, especially if you have any medical conditions.
The supplements I take are:
- Vitamin D3 Drops – I take about 2,000 IU/day with sun exposure to keep my levels up. Those drops are 2,000 IU per drop so a bottle lasts us a really long time. I also test my levels a few times a year and stop taking D3 if my levels are high enough.
- Vitamin C – I take about 2,000 mg/day. Vitamin C is a potent antioxidant and also has many other benefits to the body.
- Omega-3s and Krill oil – I’ve experimented with several different brands over the years. I’m currently trying these capsules at the recommendation of Dr. Rhonda Patrick in a recent podcast episode, and I like them so far.
- Astaxanthin – A highly potent antioxidant which research shows acts as an internal sunscreen. It’s also supposedly an anti-aging supplement. I don’t give this one to the kids though.
- Polypodium Leucotomos
- Sundots – These tasty gummies help boost skin’s ability to resist solar damage. They contain polypodium leucotomos extract, a fancy name for a fern long used in parts of the world for sun protection.
Get Some Rays the Right Way
Avoid sunburn from the inside out and the outside in with nutritional support and a hat + rash guard. Take these measures a month or two before beach season starts and condition your skin to love the sun. It’s good for your health anyway and saves money on sunscreen!
This article was medically reviewed by Dr. Robert Galamaga, whois a board-certified internal medicine physician. As always, this is not personal medical advice and we recommend that you talk with your doctor or work with a doctor at SteadyMD.
Do you eat your sunscreen? Still use the toxic stuff? Avoid the sun completely? Tell me below!
I do everything but the vitamin C (can’t take it b/c I have iron overload) and the
Astaxanthin (never heard of it until now). I still need sunscreen thought. I’m very skeptical that it would be possible to get away without any sunscreen at all unless you didn’t spend long periods of time in the sun. We go to the beach all the time.
I’m redheaded and recently moved to the desert. I quickly noticed that I only had to ever wear sunscreen when we were at the beach, being out in the desert sun never burned my skin anymore. It was strange but I was very happy. I asked doctors about it here and there and they had no answer for it. I don’t think they even believed me. I was diagnosed as gluten intolerant 4 years ago and so have been eating gluten free for 4 years now. I was wondering if that actually had anything to do with it and it seems that it does. Cool!
i have to say thanks! Ive been burned 4 times already this year from running on my long runs and I dont eat processed foods and sugar and hardly any grains. HOwever Im not regular on taking my FCLO so will try to make it regular!
Did you use sunscreen (applied every 2 hours) on the days that you got burned?
Wellness Mama….THANK YOU for posting this! I have a quick question. You say to avoid vegetable oil but to eat a lot of healthy fats. Can you specify? For example, I avoid canola/peanut oil, and opt for cooking with grapeseed, olive or coconut oil. Would those three types of oils fall under the category of vegetable oil or healthy fats?
Healthy fats specifically would be good saturated fats like coconut oil, real butter, grass-fed meats, fish, etc. Also, things like olive oil in moderation, but they don’t have the same protective benefit. The fermented cod liver oil/butter blend has probably the most effect though. Also, I’d personally not cook in olive oil, since it oxidizes quickly when heated, but is is wonderful for salad dressings or cool dishes…
I was just gonna say, don’t heat olive oil but use it cool, in salads and such. Coconut oil is a safe high heating oil as is avocado oil.
I have a question about the Butter Oil / Fermented Cod Liver Oil Blend:
These are very expensive to order and I am especially sensitive to the sun, because of medications, would it be worth it for me and also would I have to take them every single day or just days that I’m going to be exposed to the sun more so than usual? We buy the sunscreen right now that has no toxins, but it’s not cutting it completely and it’s miserable putting it on every day (multiple times) as well as having to wear a bunch of extra clothing in the heat. It beats the bumps and sun burn that I get without it.
I personally think that the reason for low levels of Vitamin D should be investigated in more depth as I’ve read a lot about illness causing the levels to be low, rather than the levels being low causing illness. Ignoring that, I certainly support anything that involves not covering yourself in chemicals! However is it conclusive that your skin is not getting damaged because it’s not getting burnt? …
I agree that the year on year decline in average Vitamin D status is a matter of concern that should not be ignored.
There are several aspects to the problem.
Atmospheric pollution is a major factor in urban environments and maybe also in some rural situations where intensive agricultural chemical use may create ground level ozone. Low level ozone blocks UVB from skin so reduces vitamin D potential for humans downwind (it’s also reduces crop yield)
Several prescription medicines contribute to vit d deficiency. Corticosteroids are the may type in common usage (particularly kids with asthma) but we should be aware that cortisol is a corticosteroid so everyone with raised cortisol levels (and that means every under stress) will be losing vitamin d3.
I think we also should be aware magnesium is involved in our ability to use vitamin d effectively and many of us aren’t getting the current low RDA for magnesium. Dr Cannell of the Vitamin D Council explains in more.
Another aspect people forget is that while UVB creates Vitamin D3 in the skin by it’s action on 7 dehydrocholestrol molecule, UVA which is also present in sunlight actually processes the newly made vitamin D into suprasterols the body doesn’t use. It’s a safety mechanism that stops us making, absorbing toxic amounts of vitamin D. It’s impossible to get too much vitamin d from sunlight alone. However if you only expose face/hands to sunlight these are the same areas of skin that are always exposed so vitamin d made near the surface of skin at midday when UVB is highest inevitably gets degraded to suprasterols later in the day. Ideally people would expose skin at midday that is normally covered so after the midday sun exposure the clothing would be put back on to cover and protect the newly made vit d from degradation by UVA and allow time for it to be absorbed into the body.
Mentioning the 7 dehydrocholesterol molecule reminds me another cause of lower vitamin d levels is the increasing use of CHOLESTEROL LOWERING spreads/statins and general cholesterol paranoia. if you are lowering cholesterol you inevitably are also lowering the ability to produce the vit d precursor molecule 7 dehyroCHOLESTEROL. It’s in the same family so in the same metabolic pathway. You can’t lower one without lowering the other. Cholesterol levels in the skin naturally decline as we age so our ability to make vitamin d gets less as we age. So people lowering cholesterol are prematurely ageing their skin and lowering their ability to make vitamin D3.
It is not conclusive that your skin is not getting damaged becuase its not getting burnt…. you still need to find a way to protect yourself against the sun. Read my previous post “I am an avid reader of your blog and i love most of your articles but I do believe you have something wrong here and for everyones safety I wanted to correct that. You are absolutely right that a sunburn is really inflammation. But you are wrong in thinking that avoiding sunburns by reducing inflammation can reduce the risk of skin cancer. Exposure to UV Rays crosslinks DNA such as the DNA found in the cells of the epidermis. Crosslinked DNA is very bad, and when the cell divides the DNA often winds up with mutations in the area of the crosslinking (I could go into more detail, but for the most part I will use laymans terms). A healthy cell has ways of detecting these mutations and once they are detected the cell starts the apoptosis pathway (commiting suicide for the greater good of the host). This apoptosis is what is causing the inflammation. Your body is being called to the site of the damage to remove these cells with mutated DNA. If their is no inflammation, or if the immune system misses even just a few of these cells the cells would live on to gather even more mutations overtime. Eventually, the very pathway that would lead to apoptosis of the cell becomes broke, and you essentially have a cell that replicates out of control and can’t die, ie cancer. Interestingly, a “tan” is your bodies way of protecting itself against UV radiation becuase the melanin that is being produced blocks UV rays. It’s true that many of the chemicals in sunscreen are toxic and should be avoided !! But its false that reducing inflammation will protect you. Extended exposure to the sun WILL increase your risk of skin cancer. The best way so far that I know of to protect your skin against skin cancer is to simply wear long sleeved shirts and pants… not ideal. I don’t think that there is an ideal method of protection right now, but I have not looked into a lot of the natural sun screens yet (I just into the all natural thing about a month ago and since it isn’t summer yet I havent thought about sunscreen until now). Anyway, thats my science lesson of the day!”
I’ve noticed the same thing; I’ve always been an SPF-100+ kind of girl, but I haven’t had a serious sunburn since I went Real Food. Maybe a little pinkness, but that’s it. It’s awesome – I don’t mind the actual burn so much, but I hate peeling afterwards!
I’d guess that replacing vegetable oils with good fats has helped me the most, since that’s the change I’ve been most consistent about. So for those who might want to focus on one thing for simplicity, swapping your fats might make a big difference.
Really interesting article – fits in with the fact that people in the Mediterranean (despite much more sun exposure and far less use of sunscreen) have much lower skin cancer rates than people in the US, UK and Australia (
Only around three in every 100,000 people living in Mediterranean countries develop malignant melanoma, compared with up to 22 per 100,000 in Scandinavia and 50 per 100,000 in Australia – source:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/3183834/Mediterranean-diet-halves-risk-of-skin-cancer.html )
Diet just has to be a significant factor.
Great statistics! Thanks!
Absolutely wonderful article. Each summer I lean more and more towards putting no sunscreen on my kids. I’ve slowly gone the route of only applying it during the most intense parts of the day. Luckily two of my 3 children have that great olive skin that doesn’t burn. My oldest is fair like myself so he is more likely to burn. I would like to try these supplements for improving their sun tolerance as well as mine. What dosage of everything do you recommend for children (mine are 6, 8 and 9)? We are on the right track as my husband and I eat Paleo and the kids eat very clean. I appreciate all your insight!!
My kids get 1000 IU a day of Vitamin D, 1-2,000 mg of vitamin c, the coconut oil in a smoothie, 1/2 tsp of fermented cod liver oil, and I give them herbal teas to drink. With a good diet, the kids shouldn’t need the extra antioxidants.
thanks..great ,i have my daughter at 12 a menopausal kid….she needs this thanks 😉 very muchy 🙂 happy new year @ Wellness Mama <3 it….
Just curious, how do you keep the coconut oil from turning solid in a cold smoothie? Mine always turns lumpy.
Not sure if fractionated coconut oil (that’s liquid all the time) has benefits like virgin coconut oil. Found on eBay & in the vitamin section of grocery stores.
Thanks for the reply but unfortunately it doesn’t retain all the beneficial properties. “Fractionated” means that it’s no longer whole. They remove the lauric acid, which is one of the most beneficial parts of coconut oil. Fractionated coconut oil should not be used to cook with at high temps either. Once it is fractionated, it is no longer as heat stable either and can create free radicals while being used in cooking.
This isn’t very specific. What’s your protein sources and your fat sources? Could you do an example of what you eat in a day? Just saying to eat “healthy sources of saturated fats and monounsaturated fats” is so vague and non specific, it could mean literally anything and be misinterpreted. Also, all protein and fat sources are not created equal so some clarity in this department would be useful if you actually wanted to guide people on what to eat. Can you expand on this topic?
Thank you for this post- I am also very fair skinned and I have never been able to tan once in my life. Do you suggest any specific brand for the Vitamin D and C supplements?
The brands I use are in my “store” tab, or just check whatever brand you get for no questionable ingredients 🙂
Do you recommend the Vit K to go with the Vit D supplement? Or are you getting enough K with the CLO? I’ve read those 2 need to go together. Not big on taking synthetic vitamins and worry about other side effects
Vitamin K2. Some supplements include it in the right proportions.