Is organic really better?

There are occasional foods I lean toward organic for, but for the most part, I’m fine with non-organic produce. We eat smoothies every morning for breakfast and I imagine we’d go broke if we ate ONLY organic.

Our lettuce tends to be primarily organic, but the fruits we add generally are not. Organic lettuce in bulk is usually a little less pricey.

Anyway, check out this video to see what it says about this debate.

Is the science wrong on sun exposure?

With Puerto Rican blood living in a winter cold location like Chicago, every summer I turn into a brown version of a tall, dark-haired male. I actually look kind of ethnic in summer months. In Europe, I’m confused for Italian, Spanish Greek or even some form of Arabic.

When I was growing up, one time someone confused me for African American. But we were in dimly lit area. Whatever.

I’m adopted, and there’s one thing I definitely got from my birth mom, it’s the love of the sun. Even at 43, I love running shirtless along the lakefront. Not to show off what little muscle I have, but to avoid a farmers tan …

Every time I go to the dermatologist, they tell me, “Wear sunscreen. Especially when you’re running. Consider getting one of those sunscreen shirts.”

I try to wear sunscreen. But sometimes I “forget.” I like that summer time glow.

This article from Outside Magazine online may be the death of me. Ha. Sometimes all we need is that bias confirmation and then … we’re off to the races.

The article basically says that the current science on sunscreen-apalooza apocalyptic thought is primarily based on the whitest of the white skin. My evolved state of sun exposure didn’t make it this far by wearing chemicals on my skin. LOL.

Check it out. Here’s a snip:

These are dark days for supplements. Although they are a $30-plus billion market in the United States alone, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, selenium, beta-carotene, glucosamine, chondroitin, and fish oil have now flopped in study after study.

If there was one supplement that seemed sure to survive the rigorous tests, it was vitamin D. People with low levels of vitamin D in their blood have significantly higher rates of virtually every disease and disorder you can think of: cancer, diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, heart attack, stroke, depression, cognitive impairment, autoimmune conditions, and more. The vitamin is required for calcium absorption and is thus essential for bone health, but as evidence mounted that lower levels of vitamin D were associated with so many diseases, health experts began suspecting that it was involved in many other biological processes as well.

And they believed that most of us weren’t getting enough of it. This made sense. Vitamin D is a hormone manufactured by the skin with the help of sunlight. It’s difficult to obtain in sufficient quantities through diet. When our ancestors lived outdoors in tropical regions and ran around half naked, this wasn’t a problem. We produced all the vitamin D we needed from the sun.

But today most of us have indoor jobs, and when we do go outside, we’ve been taught to protect ourselves from dangerous UV rays, which can cause skin cancer. Sunscreen also blocks our skin from making vitamin D, but that’s OK, says the American Academy of Dermatology, which takes a zero-tolerance stance on sun exposure: “You need to protect your skin from the sun every day, even when it’s cloudy,” it advises on its website. Better to slather on sunblock, we’ve all been told, and compensate with vitamin D pills.