7d • 🏆
The Sun = Life
How (and Why) we stopped blocking the Sun, and haven’t burned or peeled in 5+ years. Yes, this makes us “black sheep”…
For years I did what everyone says you’re supposed to do. Sunscreen, long sleeves, hats, hiding from the sun, staying covered. I lived in Florida and still burned constantly. Like legit burn and peel cycle. And what’s crazy is I wasn’t even getting “more sun” than other people. I was just reacting worse.
Fast forward to the last five plus years. I stopped wearing sunscreen, I stopped being scared of the sun, and I have not had a single real burn or peel. I’m tan year round. That sounds backwards on paper, so I had to figure out what changed.
What is UV Damage?
Getting a sunburn isn’t just from “getting too much sun” and it’s not just UV damage. Sunburn is your own body’s inflammatory response to UV.
UV is the response trigger, but inflammation decides how bad it gets.
Two people can be under the same sun and have totally different outcomes. One turns pink and peels, the other gets darker. Same sun, different internal environment.
When you burn, what’s happening is UV creates oxidative stress in your skin cells. That stress creates unstable molecules called free radicals. Then your immune system basically overreacts, sends a bunch of inflammatory signals, blood rushes to the area, you get heat and redness, and then you peel because the skin is repairing itself.
So the real question is not just “how much sun did you get” but “how inflamed is your body when the sun hits you, and how prepared is your system to deal with that oxidative stress.”
That’s where grounding, morning sunlight, and food come in.
Grounding
Grounding is a huge one, and it’s the easiest to miss because people assume it’s just some spiritual woo-woo thing. It’s actually simple physics and biology.
Your body runs on electrical charge. Cells use electrical gradients. Mitochondria literally move electrons around to make energy. UV exposure creates free radicals, and free radicals are basically molecules missing electrons. They cause damage by stealing electrons from your tissues.
The earth holds a massive negative electrical charge. When you touch the ground directly, the idea is you can pull in electrons from the earth. Those electrons can neutralize free radicals. So instead of UV causing this huge cascade of oxidative stress and inflammation, it gets buffered.
I know that sounds wild, but the concept is super straightforward if you think of it like this. If sun exposure is like a power hungry app running on your phone, grounding is like plugging the phone into a charger while you run the app. The battery doesn’t drain as hard.
And this connects perfectly to something I’ve noticed for years. Some people can go to the beach and tan but then burn at a theme park, and they think it makes no sense. But it actually does make sense.
At the beach, you’re barefoot in the sand, in the ocean, grounded. You’re also usually more relaxed, breathing better, maybe eating less junk while you’re there. At a theme park, you’re in shoes all day, on concrete, surrounded by heat reflecting off the ground, stressed, probably crushing processed food, maybe dehydrated, and you’re not grounded at all. Same Florida sun, totally different internal setup. People burn walking around Epcot faster than they burn laying on the beach, and it’s not because the sun is “stronger” at Disney.
Chlorine
One more thing I started noticing over time was how different my skin reacted at heavily chlorinated pools.
I used to burn noticeably faster at public or hotel pools compared to the beach or just being outside. At the time I thought it was just because pools don’t have shade or breeze. But chlorine actually changes how your skin handles UV.
Chlorine is a strong oxidizing chemical. That is literally why it is used. It kills bacteria by creating oxidative stress that destroys cells. The problem is it does not magically ignore your skin.
First, chlorine strips your skin’s natural oil barrier. Your skin is coated in a thin protective layer made of sebum. That oil layer helps hold moisture in and acts like a natural shield against environmental stress, including UV. Chlorine breaks down that oil layer. So after time in the pool, your skin is drier and more exposed before you even get into the sun.
Second, chlorine increases oxidative stress on the skin. Remember how UV exposure already creates free radicals. Chlorine does the same thing. So now your skin is dealing with oxidative stress from the pool and from the sun at the same time. It is a double whammy.
Third, chlorine makes skin more sensitive and dehydrated. When skin loses moisture, the barrier function weakens. Weak skin barrier equals less resilience and more susceptibility to irritation and burning.
Fourth, chlorine can disrupt the skin microbiome. Your skin has beneficial bacteria that help regulate inflammation and maintain barrier health. Heavy chlorination wipes out a lot of that ecosystem. Without that protective layer, the skin tends to react more aggressively to environmental stress like UV.
Fifth, chlorine exposure often means longer, continuous sun exposure. At pools people stay in direct sun for hours without realizing how much cumulative UV they are getting because the water keeps them cool. That cooling effect masks the early warning signs that you are getting too much sun.
So when you combine stripped skin oils, dehydration, increased oxidative stress, microbiome disruption, and long sun exposure, it creates a perfect setup for burning faster.
Looking back, it makes total sense why beach days were usually fine but long days at commercial pools and theme parks were where burns happened most often.
It was never just the sun. It was the condition my skin was in before the sun even hit it.
Morning Sunlight
The next huge shift for me was getting morning sunlight into my eyes. This one is honestly probably the biggest lever.
Your body has a master circadian clock in the brain that is set by light hitting your eyes early in the day. When morning light hits the retina, it tells your brain, daytime is starting. That master clock then sends timing signals to the whole body.
Your skin has its own circadian rhythm too. Skin cells do different jobs depending on time of day. They repair DNA, produce antioxidants, regulate pigmentation, and manage inflammation on a 24 hour cycle.
So when I started consistently getting morning sunlight, not through a window, actually outside, I believe my body started “predicting” the day properly. It’s like my system finally got the memo that sun is coming, so it prepares.
Preparation looks like this.
More antioxidant activity. Better DNA repair enzyme activity. Better melanin readiness. Even small changes in skin thickness and barrier function over time. Better mitochondrial efficiency.
Basically, morning light acts like a daily training signal. It tells your body, we are a daytime creature, here comes UV, get your defenses ready.
When people wake up indoors, stare at artificial light, spend all day inside, then go outside randomly at noon or on weekends, their body never gets that gradual ramp. It’s like showing up to a hard workout with zero warm up, then acting surprised you got wrecked.
Morning sunlight is like a warm up for your skin and your hormones.
Food Matters
Third piece is food, and I think this is the most underrated piece for skin and sun tolerance.
Your skin is coated in oil, sebum. That oil is literally built from the fats you eat.
If your diet is loaded with highly processed foods and seed oils, your skin oil becomes loaded with omega 6 polyunsaturated fats. Those fats oxidize easily under UV. They are chemically unstable in sunlight.
So when UV hits skin that has a lot of those unstable fats in the oil layer, it’s like throwing sparks into dry grass. Lipid peroxidation goes crazy, inflammation spikes, and you burn easier.
Another thing I noticed before I quit drinking (yep 3 years sober), was how dramatically alcohol changed my sun tolerance.
Any time I drank in the sun, I burned faster and worse. At the time I thought it was coincidence. Now it makes perfect sense biologically.
Alcohol basically stacks multiple sunburn risk factors at the same time.
First, alcohol massively increases inflammation. When your body processes alcohol, the liver converts it into acetaldehyde, which is a toxic compound. That process creates oxidative stress and inflammatory signaling throughout the body. Remember earlier how sunburn is largely an inflammatory reaction to UV. If you start the day already inflamed, the sun has a much easier time pushing you into that burn response.
Second, alcohol dehydrates you. Sun exposure already pulls fluid toward the skin and increases sweating. Alcohol adds another layer of dehydration by suppressing vasopressin, the hormone that helps your body retain water. Dehydrated skin is more fragile, less resilient, and more prone to damage and irritation from UV.
Third, alcohol reduces antioxidant capacity. Your body uses up glutathione and other antioxidants to detox alcohol. Those same antioxidants are the exact tools your skin relies on to neutralize the oxidative stress created by UV light. So you end up going into the sun with your defense system already depleted.
Fourth, alcohol increases blood vessel dilation. That flushed feeling people get when they drink is vasodilation. More blood flow to the skin sounds harmless, but it actually amplifies redness and the visible inflammatory response when UV damage occurs. So burns appear faster and more intense.
Fifth, alcohol disrupts sleep and circadian rhythm. Even one night of drinking can blunt melatonin production and disrupt deep sleep. Melatonin is not just a sleep hormone. It is also a powerful antioxidant that helps protect skin from UV damage and supports nighttime repair. So drinking the night before sun exposure can reduce the skin’s ability to repair itself and prepare for the next day.
When you stack all of that together, alcohol basically creates the perfect storm. Higher inflammation, lower hydration, fewer antioxidants, disrupted sleep, and increased skin blood flow. Then you add strong sun exposure on top of it.
Looking back, it is not surprising at all that my worst burns happened on days that involved drinking outside, at the beach, on a boat, or at a pool.
Since quitting alcohol completely, that variable disappeared. My hydration is better, sleep is better, inflammation is lower, antioxidant capacity is higher, and my skin handles the sun much more calmly.
When you clean up the diet, cut processed foods, lower the seed oils, replace alcohol with hydration drinks, and focus on whole foods and better fat sources, your skin oils shift over time. They become more stable under UV, so the same sun exposure produces way less oxidative stress, and your body doesn’t have to go into that panic inflammation mode.
This is why I say sun tolerance is built from the inside out. Skin is not separate from the rest of you. It reflects what’s going on internally.
Now when you put those three together, it explains why my outcome changed.
I’m grounded more often, especially when I’m outside. I prioritize morning sunlight to set my clock. I avoid foods that jack up inflammation and oxidize easily. My baseline inflammation is lower. My body is better prepared for UV. My skin handles it like a trained system instead of a panicked system.
That’s also why I tan better now.
Tanning is an adaptive protective response. Melanin absorbs UV and turns it into heat more safely. Burning is basically the opposite. Burning is an overreaction. Burning is your system getting overwhelmed. But what happens during long winter months or rainy stretches? Well, I use a tanning bed.
Tanning Beds
What a tanning bed is doing, biologically, is basically controlled, predictable UV exposure that keeps the skin in an “adapted” state instead of letting it fully detrain during long stretches of bad weather.
Your skin is not static. It adapts to sunlight and it also de-adapts when exposure disappears for long periods. Think of it exactly like fitness. If you stop lifting for two months, you do not start from zero, but you definitely lose some conditioning. Skin works the same way with UV.
When the weather is bad for weeks and you suddenly jump back into strong Florida sun, that jump in exposure can overwhelm the skin before it has rebuilt its defenses. A tanning bed, used moderately, acts like maintenance training.
First, gradual melanin maintenance.
Melanin is your body’s natural sunscreen. It absorbs UV and converts it into harmless heat. When you get regular UV exposure, your melanocytes stay active and ready to produce pigment. When you go long stretches without UV, that system downshifts.
Short controlled UV sessions keep melanin production “online” so when real sun comes back, you are not starting from scratch.
Second, thickening of the outer skin layer.
Regular UV exposure causes a mild increase in the thickness of the outermost skin layer, the stratum corneum. That layer acts like a physical shield that scatters and reflects some UV before it penetrates deeper layers.
This is literally called “photoadaptation.” It is the skin becoming more resilient through small repeated exposures.
Third, increased antioxidant and DNA repair activity.
Repeated low level UV exposure increases the skin’s internal defense systems. Antioxidant enzymes ramp up. DNA repair mechanisms become more active. This is similar to how exercise creates stronger recovery systems in muscle.
When exposure disappears for months, those systems quiet down. Tanning beds can maintain that readiness during winter or long rainy stretches.
Fourth, nitric oxide and circulation effects.
UV exposure triggers nitric oxide release in the skin, which improves circulation and blood flow. Better circulation means better nutrient delivery and waste removal in skin tissue, which helps resilience and recovery.
Fifth, psychological and exposure control factor.
A tanning bed provides predictable exposure. No wind, no clouds, no sudden three hour beach day that sneaks up on you. Small controlled doses are easier for the body to adapt to than occasional massive spikes.
Now, reality check because this part matters. Tanning beds are not risk free. And I would never recommend someone abuse the use of one, ever. Artificial UV still contributes to cumulative UV exposure and skin cancer risk, especially when used excessively or aggressively.
But used occasionally and moderately, the way many people use them in winter, the biological role is basically maintaining photoadaptation so the skin is not shocked when natural sun returns.
Simple practical idea someone could use. Instead of jumping from months indoors straight into full summer sun, gradual exposure, whether natural or controlled, gives the skin time to rebuild its defenses.
It is the same concept as not running a marathon the first day you decide to get back into cardio. Gradual exposure almost always leads to a better outcome than sudden overload.
So I’m not saying the sun is harmless or that you can do dumb stuff and never pay for it. Excess exposure can still damage skin and increases skin cancer risk. I’m not pretending that isn’t real.
What I am saying is that my relationship with the sun changed because my internal environment changed.
Before, I was doing the exact opposite. I was fearful, covered up, using sunscreen, and still burning. It’s like I never let my body adapt. Plus I was probably more inflamed overall back then, even if I didn’t realize it.
Now, with consistent exposure and the right signals, my body adapts. It doesn’t freak out. It gets darker and stronger.
So, that is why me and my family are tan year round, don’t peel, and don’t ever fear the sun. We respect it. We understand it. We appreciate it. And we prepare for it.
You can too. But be smart. This isn’t medical advice. But this is my story.
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The Sun = Life
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