Each year when staring at red, parched by the summer sun faces and fresh sunburn bubbles, I become a pagan. I am thinking about the SUN like about DIVINITY: it is able to love and to hate, to heal and to cripple, to give and take away one’s health.

Kind divinity is an irreplaceable regulator of metabolism, tonus of the muscular system, immune and nervous systems. Only 15 minutes of direct sun light that fell on to your skin during the day is enough to make an organism to produce a necessary amount of vitamin D. It stimulates growth of the bones during infancy period, prevents from the development of the osteoporosis and depression in the middle age. Deficit of the sun increases the risk of the breast’s, bowel’s, and the prostate gland’s cancer.

Be careful: Dangerous for life!

The main minus of an abundance of solar radiation is the risk of striking of a specific skin cancer – melanoma. Melanoma strikes in the most active age from 35 to 45 years and loves women 3 three times more. It is astonishing, but skin cancer starts from outwardly harmless, bearable and rapidly closing up burns. An overbalance of sunlight acts just as ionizing radiation does – it produces mutations in skin cells and represses the immunity. Some people have a heightened predisposition to the development of skin cancer and melanoma. The modern level of diagnostics easily allows figuring it out: with a help of calculation of risk factors and predisposition’s characteristics, the topography of birthmarks on the skin and marker’s exposure – tyrosinases in urine.

God saves the saved

If such a predisposition exists, it is better to avoid direct sunrays and wisely use sunblocks and lip balsams. Try to avoid midday sunrays (from 11 to 16 hours). Sun’s reflection from water and sand, as well as, from snow and metal doubles the amount of ultraviolet rays that skin absorbs. Children under the age of 10 are especially susceptible to the direct sunrays, for infants during the first year of life it is better to avoid sunrays at all. It is obligatory to cover heads of children and to buy sunglasses; not toy ones, but the ones that have ultraviolet filters. If sun is hidden by the clouds – it does not mean that it does not exist – 85% of ultraviolet are affecting the skin when the seaside’s weather is dull.

Panacea from a calamity

Many medicines, which are called photosensitizers, increase skin’s susceptibility to solar radiation. Among them are antibiotics, sulfanilamides, contraceptives, antidepressants, antidiabetic agents, diuretics, and also remedies from allergy and blood pressure, as well as many popular medicinal grasses, for example St.-John’s wort and angelica. Perfumes, deodorants and cosmetics may bring the same danger. Dame Nature specially prepared an antidote for a surplus of solar radiation for the wise half of mankind – fruits and vegetables. Antioxidants are especially necessary in that time: carotinoids – that can be found in pumpkin oil, carrots, tomatoes, selenium that we always lack, vitamin E and vegetable, unrefined oils containing skin protecting vitamin P, and also cooled green tea - the healthiest summer beverage. Chanterelles not only protect the skin from the abundance of active sun, but also help vitamin D3 to synthesize under the influence of the same sunrays.

Make friends with the sun

According to the data provided by the International Agency on Cancer Study (IACS) mankind is under a threat of becoming a victim of malignant melanoma’s epidemic. This is one of the very few malignant tumors for which prophylactic conditions may bring effect that is close to 99%, but spending on melanoma’s prevention would be 5-10 times less in comparison to spending on still ineffective treatment. Therefore, it is not worth the trouble to become a guinea pig during the summer. If you have a predisposition, you are sick or if you are on medicaments or phitopreparates – refrain from the sun and consult with a qualified doctor.