How Sunlight Heals Skin Disease
The man who cured lupus with sunlight
The dose makes the poison. The medicine of light is no different.
If you read our previous post about skin cancer and how patterns of melanoma are found in areas of the skin least exposed to sunlight, chances are you’re starting to question the mainstream narrative of the sun being bad for you.
Meet Niels Finsen, the Icelandic doctor who won the Nobel Prize for introducing phototherapy to treat tuberculosis and lupus in 1903:
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1903 was awarded to Niels Ryberg Finsen "in recognition of his contribution to the treatment of diseases, especially lupus vulgaris, with concentrated light radiation, whereby he has opened a new avenue for medical science"
Scientists today have found that Finsen’s treatments worked by filtering out certain wavelengths of light, and letting in mostly blue light in the 400nm (nanometer) range.1
Many skin diseases, including lupus, are exacerbated by individuals who are anemic, or have too little hemoglobin in the blood.
The graph below shows how hemoglobin is bound to oxygen and mobilized most effectively at 400nm:
Blue and UV (ultraviolet) light can be harmful if we’re exposed to too much from the Sun or electronics. However when taken in small, exacting doses, in combination with full spectrum sunlight, blue and UV light can serve to kill pathogenic strains of bacteria.
It’s important to note that even though he was using tools to focus UV and 400nm blue wavelength of sun on areas of the skin affected by lupus, Finsen’s experiments were conducted outside, in full spectrum sunlight!
Below is a picture of nurses, known as “light elves”, using precision instruments to focus light on lupus patients:
The tools they used were made of quartz glass, which lets in the UV spectrum.
(Note: the only way to get the benefits of sun and vitamin D is with windows that are made of quartz. Standard window glass blocks out all beneficial UV spectrum).
Lupus Patients treated with Focused Sunlight:
How does light heal?
According to photobiologists (scientists who study how light affects life), there are 3 basic principles to light’s mechanism of action:
Penetration: Light penetrates the skin (longer wavelengths such as infrared go even deeper into our skin and can promote healing)
Bactericide: Light kills bacteria (shorter wavelengths such as UV and blue can destroy harmful and beneficial bacteria on the outer layers of the skin)
Incitement: Light causes inflammation, which then triggers either a healing or destructive response. Inflammation is only a response, and not always the enemy!
B12 is made in the Sun
B12 has been shown to be a photoreceptor2, and low levels of this vitamin are often found in patients with anemia.
A deficiency in vitamin B12 can affect the production of red blood cells, decreasing the number of red blood cells circulating in the blood, and therefore decreasing the amount of hemoglobin available for oxygen transport.
B12 not only helps us make red blood cells, but also forms our nervous system and the myelin sheath, the “wire coating” of our nerves. If we are deficient in B12, our neurons won’t fire as quickly.
If you read our post about why Vitamin D supplements don’t work, you’ll understand why sunlight is crucial in helping our bodies absorb certain nutrients and vitamins through the process of sulfation. B12 and sulfated Vitamin D3 are linked to the presence of AM sunlight frequencies and this is why pernicious anemia is associated with a lack of sun.3
The bottom line: our blood transports oxygen to our bodies in order to promote healing, and our blood needs light to move and groove!
Be the light you want to see in the world.
Roman & Bohdanna
Kirsten Iversen Møller (2005). How Finsen's light cured lupus vulgaris. Photodermatol Photoimmunol Photomed, 118-24