If you have ever cared for house plants, a home garden, or worked on a farm, you know that fruit trees, vegetable crops, and blooming flowers that receive a full day of sunshine will grow faster, bigger, taller, stronger, more colorful, and provide a larger harvest than those plants grown in shade or with less available sunshine.  Since human beings eat a plant diet and are part of the natural cycles of life on earth,  sunbathing health benefits could also be greatly harvested.

A Brief History of Sun Bathing

Man was originally a nude animal before clothing was invented.  Primitive humans spent all of their time in the sunshine and could only take refuge from direct sunlight in the shade of clouds and trees, or in caves and underground dwellings.  Sun bathing has been practiced by all people of the ancient past including the Babylonians and Egyptians who had their sun-gardens.

The Egyptians were sun-worshipers, and about 5000 years ago they erected one of the first sun-god temples in the ancient city called “On”.  The name On represented the heavenly force that moved the sun across the sky from sunrise to sunset. Later in history, the city was renamed Heliopolis — City of The Sun, by the Greeks who had their helioses, and the Romans with their solaria.  Herodotus emphasized the sun’s effect of strengthening the muscles and nerves, and Philostratus tells us that the Olympian athletes were required to take sun-baths as part of their training.

These observations would be scientifically proven hundreds of years later by the physicist Arthur Eddington, who had shown that the ultraviolet rays of the sun can ionize calcium. Ionized calcium flows freely in your bloodstream and is not attached to proteins. The animal body cannot use calcium in the absence of sunlight; all cells need calcium in order to function and it helps build strong bones and teeth, large and firm muscles, it’s important for heart function, nerve signaling, and blood clotting.

During the Middle and Dark Ages, Christianity was the dominant religion in Europe, and dogma promoted strong reactions against anything “Pagan” in society. Thus the ancient practice of sun bathing by the healthy and the sick, was practically eliminated from daily use and replaced by long head-to-toe clothing that prevented natural bodily ventilation and access to the sun’s healing effect.  During these anti-natural times, only the Jews and Arabs continued to pursue regular sun-baths.  The modern practice of sun bathing had was popularized by Arnold Rikli, who is regarded as the originator of this practise in the late 1800′s.  His health institution in Austria attracted patients from around the world where he prescribed sun-baths to heal various diseases, and he himself died in 1907 at a ripe old age of 97.

The Composition of Light and How It’s Used in sunbathing

Sunlight is made up of a collection of energy wavelengths that vibrate at various frequencies.  Imagine looking at a rainbow and seeing the spectrum of colors starting with red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The length of the wave decreases as you move through the colors starting from red, and at the same time the frequency of vibration is increasing as you move towards violet.  The visible color spectrum gives us the sensations of light, color, and heat, but there are also ‘invisible’ frequencies of light on either end of the electromagnetic spectrum (see diagram here).

“Superior qualities are uniformly found existing in animals of the same species as these live in unshaded sunlight.  This is just as true of humans as it is of animals; whoever lives habitually in the sunlight grows strong.  This is not only true of the body itself in its various parts, but is true of the intelligent and responsible faculties which reside within the body.” – Dr. James C. Jackson

Light enables plants to use carbon dioxide gas through the chemical process of photosynthesis (the word photo comes from “photon” or “light wave/particle”), to create carbohydrates which are sugars and starches.  Plants kept in darkness grow stunted and colorless, and in time will die.  Many experiments have been performed on animals such as tadpoles, rats, and chickens to document the (horrible) effects of abstinence from sunlight, causing abnormal development, weak bones and muscles, and blindness to name a few.  Humans are not separate from the Laws of Nature and thus must obey the requirements of ample sunshine to grow mature and healthy. To illustrate this point consider what George Wharton James says in his book What the White Man May Learn From The Indian about uncivilized and unclothed Indians of the N. American Southwest, with whom he had 30 years of intimate association:

“For many years I scarcely saw a skin disease amongst them, and when the skin would be torn or injured in any way, as I have often seen it, by their falling from a horse, by riding through the forest after deer and catching the projecting limbs of trees, etc., the rapidity with which the wound healed was both surprising and enlightening.  When my skin was torn there was a good deal of pain and it took a long time to heal, and yet I was far healthier than many white men. Yet what to me was a severe wound they regarded as a trivial affair, paying little or no attention to it,… I have never seen an Indian with a poor head of hair or with dandruff or any other disease of the scalp.”

Indeed, sunshine stimulates growth of hair and nails as can be easily witnessed in the summer months.  It provides increased resistance to infection and skin diseases, sores, and ulcers, and these heal more rapidly under the sun.  Through chemical reactions in the skin, the important vitamin D is naturally synthesized in humans, which aids to keep the immune system strong against wound infections, harmful bacteria in water and food, and against viruses.  In 1876, Downes and Blunt formally discovered that UV light can kill bacteria, and to the present day UV light technology can be used to sterilize against fungus, molds, and other micro-organisms.

More sunbathing health benefits

Sunshine improves mental efficiency and lowers symptoms of stress and depression. On dark, cloudy and rainy days, people tend to feel lower levels of energy, are more worrisome, and may feel the “blues”, especially through the cold winter months.  Upon the return of sunshine, the mood is uplifted, happiness and increased level of energy returns and people become more active outdoors.

For pregnant mothers, exposing themselves to daily sunbaths will improve the babies skeletal development and aid the mother in the production of adequate milk.  Sunbaths before and after child birth increases the mother’s ability to deal with tiredness, backache, nausea, loss of appetite, heightened emotions and hysteria.  Birth pains will be lowered and so will the loss of blood. Dr. Herbert Shelton summarizes that sunshine is an essential requirement of life:

“Due to the fact that sunshine is an essential of healthy nutrition, being necessary to growth, development and repair of tissue, it is of value in all states or conditions of the body.  It is not a specific “cure” for one or two so-called “specific diseases,” as the medical profession teaches.  It is a hygienic, not a therapeutic agent, and is needed as well in health as in conditions of impaired health.  It is needed by the healthy, growing, developing child, the pregnant or nursing mother, the chronic invalid, the convalescing patient, the athlete, and by all who desire to maintain or regain health.  It is an important aid in building and maintainng health and we should not wait until we become sick to make use of it.”

With the about quote in mind, this concludes the introductory to Helio-hygiene.  In the next article we will go into details of how sunshine can be used in sickness, how to improve your eyesight, how to properly suntan, information about lotions, suntan preparations, and more.

Sources for this article include:

Shelton M., Herbert – “Fasting and Sun Bathing”, 1950.
http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/020127shelton.III/020127.ch38.htm

Medline Plus, “Calcium – ionized”
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/003486.htm

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To simplify the proclaimed logic behind the end of the world claims, lets mention the theories behind them:

1. The Galactic Alignment
2. Approaching Planet X

The Galactic alignment and the approaching “Planet X” (or Nibiru) are the two main theories that are being blamed for the much talked about cataclysmic effects of end of the world or dooms day, as we know it. These two doomsday theories are widely based on the prediction of the Mayan calendar, which has been  “predicted” to roll over to a new year on December 21, 2012. The start of a new Mayan year in 2012 is thought to be the start of the cataclysmic disasters. Much like how our  solar calendar causes many different seasonal affects, the galactic calendar will affect the earth in a more intense fashion. But did the Mayan’s get it right?

What is the Mayan calendar?

December 21 for the ancient Mayans marked a huge celebration period that recognized the end of a whole calendar cycle. A calendar that was not only based on the solar system (movement of the earth around the sun) or the lunar system (movement of the moon around the earth) but astonishingly it was based on a whole galactic system movement, comprising of movement of the moon around the earth, the earth around the sun, as well as our sun around it’s galaxy.

What is a galactic system and how does it work?

Just as the earth moves around the sun – identical to many other solar systems – our sun itself is in constant circulation around the black hole of its (our) galaxy. Most people are quite surprised to find out that the sun is moving at a speed of nearly 1,000,000 km every hour and is constantly accelerating. So with its massive gravitational force the sun is also pulling the earth and rest of our neighbouring planets along with it.

The Mayans with their incredible knowledge of astronomy were able to predict the movements of the moon around the earth, the movements of the earth around the sun and amazingly the movement of the sun (hence our solar system) around the Milky Way galaxy. And as far as we can prove, they did this flawlessly. This, for example, is evident in the prediction of their years. The Mayan years were so accurate that it eliminated the need for Leap years, something today’s calendars cannot avoid. These ancient people who lived (as far as archaeologists can trace back) nearly 5000 to 7000 years ago kept their solar calendar years to exactly 365.25 days.

The Mayan calendar predicts that the sun will finish its one complete rotation around the Milky Way galaxy, hence rolling over to a new galactic year. For the humankind on the earth, each galactic year takes approximately 26,000 solar years. At this time the sun will cross exactly through the galaxy’s equinox, which could also be considered as the Galaxy’s “equator”. If this prediction is true then it means that during such special galactic alignment the sun and the earth will be exposed to an increase in the gravitational forces that are triggered from the Milky Way galaxy’s centre, commonly know as the “Black Hole”.

Could the Mayan calendar predictions be right?

In the main, ancient people people of Maya produced a calendar that predicts the galactic alignment and disruption in the gravitational of force of the earth to be exactly on 12/21/12 2012 at 11:11 p.m. Universal Time. As explained above, the Mayan calendar’s solar tracking of the eathly days were extremely accurate, which is why many people believe that their early galactic prediction will also prove to be exact. Although there is no doubt that the solar system will eventually cross through the Milky Way’s equinox, there are many scientists engaged in vigorous debates on whether or not the Mayans were correct about their prediction and wheather or not this will prove to cause a polar shift on December 2012; something that remains to be witnessed for accuracy.

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