I Cured Cancer

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Ah, nice, my clickbait headline got you.

Now that you are here, you might as well read what I have to say:

Its officially summer in the North. Rejoice, my friends up there.

For those who don’t know, I grew up in the state of Maine. Maine is one of the most beautiful places in the world… in the summer.

During the summer months in Maine, the last place I wanted to be was inside on a nice sunny day. These days are few and far between, so when a clear day in the high-70s comes around, it is devastating to have to be inside working.

One day, I had an epiphany while gazing out the window during my summer job. I was in my early days of committing to a life of vitality and health. I had just read The New Evolution Diet and Gang Fit; both tapping into the idea that true health is created exploring the outdoors and being adaptable, not always in a gym.

I thought about how I feel when I am in a sunny place like Florida or California. I thought about how so many humans wake up, get in the car, go to work inside, go back in their car, go back inside, eat inside, and sit down to watch tv inside until they start all over again. These are the same people that are sick and unhealthy. They spend very little time outside.

This led me to explore Vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D deficiency is serious, but we often laugh it off, I often see joking about “seasonal depression” on social media. Seasonal depression is real; it is due to a lack of sunlight in the dreary winter months. Sunlight brings with it production of Vitamin D, which is crucial for many aspects of our health.

The Sun and Vitamin D affect our mood, muscles, skin, bones, and anecdotally, just makes my body and mind feel better. Feeling better mentally leads to feeling better physically and vice versa. There is a reason so many people flock to areas on vacation just to lay and soak in the sun. There is a reason so many are called to move to a sunny place in old age. It’s really pretty simple.

The sun heals. The sun is beneficial. Our view of it being harmful is due to evolutionary mismatch and adaptation. Our bodies are strong and incredibly adaptive. The sun is harmful if you don’t get enough of it because you have spent more of your life inside than outside, aren’t properly hydrated and have a poor diet. In reality, our bodies are truly designed to coexist with it.

Further, many of our diseases today are “mismatch diseases” - diseases that occur because our bodies are poorly or inadequately adapted to the environments in which we now live. Never in human history have we had a machine that brings us a constant stream of information from around the globe in our pockets, motor vehicles that transport us while we barely lift a finger, and stores that have cheap sugar and oil filled packaged goods flooding the shelves. Our bodies aren’t designed to handle this and it has happened so fast we haven’t had much time to adapt. You can read more about it Here.

Our bodies and brains are designed to be outside, in motion and socializing in-person, yet here we are, inside for a majority of our lives, wondering why so many humans feel off mentally, are sick and unhealthy.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the necessity of shelter. There is a reason why our ancestors built all of this; however, I truly believe we feel the best when we spend more time outside than inside. Shelter is simply that, shelter from the elements and for safety, not our natural habitat.

I settled on Cancer to begin to loosely test my hypothesis as it is widely researched and data is very accessible. I realized that if my hypothesis holds weight, the equator would be key.

The equator gets the most direct sunlight all year round, and therefore people living near it would get more direct sunlight when they are outside.

I turned to Google and searched for a map of global cancer rates and found this:

I added the equator to this photo for reference. Here is the source: https://ourworldindata.org/cancer

I am not a doctor, I am not a scientist, I am not claiming to have done in-depth research. I am just taking my own personal experience and feelings and attempting to find patterns and trends in this world. I also have received a lot of genuine interest from everyone I have ever mentioned this hypothesis to.

It is by no means conclusive, but you can see that the countries with the lowest share of the population having cancer are located near the equator, and those with the highest are furthest from the equator. You don’t see anything above 10% near the equator; they are all either north or south, where the sunlight isn’t as direct and there is less of it throughout the year. There are many ways to dispute my claim, one being life expectancy is lower in many of the countries in Africa, which would skew their cancer numbers, but it is interesting nonetheless.

For more evidence, as I was writing this, I came across a study done in Sweden that followed 29,518 women for 20 years revealed that those with active sunlight exposure habits experience a lower mortality rate than those who avoided the sun.

Here are the official results and the source:

Another, which a friend brought to my attention, is Japan, which has the highest percentage on the map and has a cultural custom of savoring whiteness as it is viewed as pure and high status. People often avoid sunlight and tanning, using umbrellas on sunny days whenever outside. Read more here. This article also references that the only area renouncing this trend is Okinawa, which we know as a Blue Zone.

Do I truly believe sunlight and proper vitamin D is an outright “cure for cancer”? No, I know it’s not that simple, but I do believe that we, as a human race, would benefit from making it a practice to spend more time outdoors and in the sun—socializing, meeting, eating, walking, exercising, hiking, sitting—just go outside as much as you can, especially now, my Northerners, in the summer.

Essentially, I write all of this to say: “When in doubt, go outside, walk in the grass, and get some sun.”

I guarantee you will feel better mentally and physically.

G

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