I Made My Kids Eat Their Sunscreen

I've been surprised to have actually had people e-mailing me asking me about me mentioning our use of sunscreen or lack thereof and I certainly don't want to disappoint anyone that might be following my adventures.. So, I must respond to the masses.  Or, the all two of you that were interested..

You did read the title right... Sort of.. I made my children eat their sunscreen...

Please read full post before reporting me to well, whatever agency one reports naughty parents to these days.

I am not talking about the stuff that comes in a bottle.. I'm talking about eating a diet that is chalked full of nutrients that protect your skin... I am also not advocating unlimited sun exposure.. However, I have come to believe that we have been misinformed about sun exposure and for those of you that expressed interest in my experiments with this, I thought I'd share... 

In 2008, when my oldest daughter broke her leg, jumping in a bounce round at a birthday party, I started evaluating her calcium intake, questioning whether she was getting enough to keep her bones strong... After counting grams, some blood test and some conversations with the pediatrician and a nutritionist, we determined that it wasn't calcium that she was deficient in but Vitamin D.

A very well informed article by Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD about Vitamin D deficiency and the importance of Vitamin D in our health can be found here. But, here are some important points that stood out to me..

* Vitamin D plays a vital role in the bodies ability to process calcium

* Lack of Vitamin D can trigger infections (influenza and tuberculosis), autoimmune diseases (multiple sclerosis, Type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and inflammatory bowel disease), cardiovascular disease, and cancer.

* Many epidemiological, cohort, and case control studies prove, at least on a more likely than not basis, that vitamin D supplements and adequate exposure to sunlight play an important role in cancer prevention (Am J Public Health 2006;96:252–261).

* The amount of Vitamin D absorbed from the sun varies by person. A darker skinned person needs more sun exposure to receive the adequate amount of vitamin D.

I feel the need to say once more, that the information included in the above cited articles support the idea of moderate sun exposure. Not unlimited sun exposure. Please do not go to the beach, get fried and then sue me. Almost everything that I've read says that when you've reached the point that your skin starts to turn pink, your body has absorbed as much Vitamin D as it can at one time.

During my Vitamin D research, I started reading articles with information about eating foods high in antioxidants that protect your skin from the damaging effects that can be caused from excessive skin exposure..

Here, you will find some great information about eating to reverse the signs of aging

and here, you will find a great information about eating to develop an internal sunscreen.

And so of course, I put the theory to the test. Pre-Chloe, my brown eyed, olive skinned husband, my brown eyed, olive skinned, daughter and myself (green eyed, light hair, honey complexion) headed to the beach.. Before our trip, I had stuffed my daughter and myself full of antioxidant rich foods while my husband seemed to be laughing under his breath.. When we got to the beach, I coated myself and my daughter with a sunscreen of SPF 8 and my husband used SPF 30.. Based on our skin tones, though I can develop a tan, I should burn more easily then my husband (and I had in the past).. My daughter and I went home with a nice golden tan, my husband, fried...

After hearing all the bad press on the damaging chemicals in sunscreen, I decided to test my theory further.. This year, before our beach trip, my husband remarkably, was much more willing to join me in my quest for nutritional sun protection. And we headed off to the beach prepared with months of eating Salmon, flax seed, leafy green vegetables and the brightest fruits I could find.. We limited our beach time to mornings and afternoons, returning to our hotel room for a nice nap during the peak sun hours of the day. I finally applied sunscreen the last two hours of our third and last day because I thought I saw a hint of pink on someone's shoulders. And we returned home with nice golden tans with very little use of sunscreen... Every one of us..

I would never recommend someone ditching sunscreen all together and my children are dark complected and need much less than a fair skinned child would. Like with most things, I try to find a balance. And, it can never hurt to eat more fruits and vegetables. Right?

For those of you that asked what chemicals to avoid in sunscreen... That's something I'm still learning about. If anyone reading has more information on that, I'd love hear it! If you are interested in learning more about chemicals in sunscreen, I think this article at "Healthy Tidbits for Kids" is a good place to start. I try to stick with California Baby because it is an organic brand. It's worked well for us because my children don't require much. But, it's expensive. But, if you've ever suffered a sunburn, you know that's never fun. So, at times when I don't have the organic sunscreen on hand, I try to see what poses the biggest threat, the sun or the sunscreen and make the best judgment I can.. A lot of times, that means using whatever sunscreen is available but more often, simply limiting our time in the sun.

And so you have, Operation Eat our Sunscreen..

For my family that means:

*A diet that stuffs us full of antioxidants

 (I mean change your poop the color of whatever fruit you're eating kind of stuff)

* Avoiding peak sun hours

* limited, organic, sunscreen use

How about you? What are your thoughts on sun protection?

Blessings,

I'm apart of the Green Mom Blog Hop!  Who Would have known?

Thanks for the Invite Gals!

So what if I'm a tree hugging hippie..

I was having a conversation with a friend the other day about my experience with Endometriosis. When she asked why I had never before, given her this information, the only thing I could reply was... fear.. Fear that I will be not taken seriously because I will be seen as a tree hugging hippie. And if the truth be known, a tree hugging hippie would not be the worst thing that I could be mistaken for. But, just to head off any misconceptions.. I will start by saying.. I believe in the use of antibiotics... as a last resort. I am a fan of my friend the epidural. A BIG FAN! I use cold medicine.. in moderation. I felt guilty about my ton (literal ton as in 2,000 pounds) in diaper waste that I created with each of my children. I didn't feel like cloth diapering was a realistic option since we were always on the go with Adam being a youth minister so for a while, I used recyclable diapers. It eventually became too much of a burden on our budget so I decided to make changes where it was less costly. I would like to buy all organic food but, it is not something that I can afford to do at this point in my life so I pick and choose the things that I think are most important. But, it is a personal conviction of mine that I find some sort of balance between taking care of my family's health, making wise spending decisions and taking care of God's creation that He loves so much. And yes, in my eyes, that means conserving. And why we're at it.. If you just called me a liberal... Can you please explain to me how CONSERVING can be anything but being CONSERVATIVE? I really don't care for the assumption that I'm politically liberal because I care about the environment and btw, if you look up the word "liberal" in the dictionary, you will find that using it in that way is a severe misuse of the word, thank you very much. And if you do want to know my views on politics...THEY STINK and are most often twisted around someone's pocketbook.

So, off my soapbox and back to the experience..
If you've been here before, you've no doubt heard me mention my quest to have a chemical free home. It is not possible for me to totally explain what started me down this path but, it began with the desire to not just treat the symptoms of the cause of the Endometriosis that I had been diagnosed with that doctors said had most likely left me infertile (read that story HERE) but, to discover the cause of the Endometriosis. In my research, I discovered that the occurrences of Endometriosis has risen by 50% in the last 25 years. Because of a book I read, "What your Doctor May Not Tell You about Pre-menopause", I became pretty convinced that this rise was due to hormone imbalances due to exposure of chemicals that women have encountered through what we breathe, eat, and absorb through our skin. Yes, that was the shocker to me that chemicals could be ingested through my skin. If you are having trouble sleeping, if you are suddenly having skin problems, if you have painful periods, if you're periods are irregular, if you are having serious problems with PMS, or any other issues that could be hormone related., I highly recommend this book. It answered so many questions about what was going on with my body. Anyway, to make a long story short, after following the recommendations that Dr. John Lee gave in this book, I have two healthy children and very regular, pain free cycles, something that had never happened prior to obtaining this information. Not only did I become convinced that these hormone imbalances were the cause of female problems but also certain types of cancers.

When I was pregnant with Chloe, I saw a news broadcast about a frightening study that had been done on infants in where it was found that in infants under eight months old that had baby products used on them (lotions, shampoos, etc), those infants had four times the level of chemicals in their blood as the babies who had not had these products used on them. You can read about that HERE. Fortunately, I have a strong
adversion to certain scents and have never used much of these products anyway, but, after hearing this information, I made a concerted effort to buy chemical free products for my children.

So, with that information and so much more, I have decided that my best hope is the to take the information as it comes (as overwhelming as it can be) and do the best I can do. I pick the things that seem the most harmful and do what I can afford. And for the rest, I feed my children lots of foods with nutrients like antioxidants that will hopefully counter the things that I can not remove from their lives. If that makes me a tree hugging hippie, then I stand guilty.. But before you judge or criticize, please keep in mind that I and other moms like me are just trying to do the best we can to take the best possible care of our families.

Blessings,
Dana