My first experience with dermatologist was when I'm at my junior high school. Like normal teenager, I was blessed with a face full of acne. So then I start to have my regular visit to many derma, from one derma to another derma, for years. Every derma gave me different prescription and procedure, cream, lotion, soap, meds, etc. But then I realise there is one common thing from them - all of them prescribed me a SUNSCREEN.
I was advised to put on sunscreen on my face anytime I go out, 3-4 times a day, reapply whenever I possibly can, as thick as possible, especially living in equator the sun exposure is higher than others. I was convinced that the sun did bad things to my skin. It burns, it grows black spots, cancer, melanoma, etc. Somehow, it rhymes with my skin condition. Every time my skin got the sun exposure I will feel tingling sensation, a bit burn and hot, and even dryness. This makes me totally agree with what my doctors said about the sun's harm.
Now, almost 20 years later, after books and journals of medicine, after skin cream and needles that I have gone through to fix my skin, I got the new insight, a common sense, about the sun :
Obviously, human does change. The Sun does not.
My grandma never wear sunscreen. But she didn't have any dark skin spot. She went out more often than her modern grandchildren obviously. She got more sun exposure than me. I spend my day 23 hours inside a building. She spent her day 13 hours under the sun. But no single fleck. What's the different? Yes, DIET. Not the sun.
Our diet is so far different from our ancestors. Our environment, with all the pollutions. Our soil is so depleted with minerals. We are having abundant of foods but in fact we are lack in nutrients, deprived. So why we are blaming the sun for what the pollution did? The pollution that WE humans make, not the sun. Why we keep bombardier with information about UV A and UV B? It's the never ending fight. Same like Cholesterol - we blame cholesterol for what other substance doing in our body.
And then now there are so many studies confirming that the application of sunscreen is even has greater risk for skin cancer rather than the sun itself. Funny right? For years we are so convinced that we have done our best to live healthier, better. But in fact we are down the rabbit hole. We are generations that put sunscreen more that our parents, but why skin cancer is found in younger and younger people? Many skin genetic disorder is found on new born. Our skin barrier is getting weaker and weaker despite all the multivitamins and gallons of sunscreen that we put.
We are generations that think every single thing in this life must have reason - preferably scientific one. We easily believe anything that has 'scientifically proven' or 'scientifically researched'. We love ads that has chemical words on (like vitamins, tocopherol, phytophennol, niacinamide, hyaluronic acid, etc) but we forget that sometimes those words are only gimmick or diversion. We think we are smarter that our parents and grandparents. Remember, They face many pandemics, they gone through famine and wars. and lived in an era without google, and yet they are far healthier that us ;)
So, is it just purely human error? Or there's something, or someone, behind these error, that makes human uniformly agree that "we can't live without sunscreen" ? Same like : We can't live without fibre, we can't live without carbohydrates, we can't live without... what? Tell me what medicine do you routinely take.
I'm saying like this because I used to be in that position. I couldn't live without my gastric meds, I couldn't live without my cold meds, I couldn't live without my sore throat candy. And now I think back about those time, WHAT THE HECK! Human are made independent, but why we are so dependant on something now? Like sunscreen. I heard my friend saying : "OMG, I forgot to put my sunscreen today! I don't wanna go out. I better go back, or my skin will be damaged!" -- Seriously? Human are that weak? Is this what a super intelligent machine (aka human) created by The Most Intelligent Being supposed to be? Is there something wrong with our common sense and our ability to reason?
ARE WE THAT WEAK?
