The sun teaches two important lessons: it does not make any difference and shines on everyone, rich or poor showing us the universality of existence. The more important lesson that the sun teaches us is humility, the kingpin for good health and happiness. The sun has been burning for so long without exhausting his fuel!

Niels Reyberg Finson was an Icelander who studied both in Iceland and Denmark. After graduation in medicine he started doing his own curious research although he tried to do many other things in addition, without much success. He was the first to treat skin tuberculosis with sunlight showing thereby the anti-germ effect of sunlight. In the year 1903, Reyberg, who was by then crippled by a killer disease, got a Nobel Prize for his work.
 

We get our energy for running the body chemistry from the ultraviolet region of sunlight. If the sun were to go on strike we will all perish! In addition, sunlight gives us the most useful vitamin D3, which is the basis of our immune system health and bone health. Animals which have their back to the sun all the time do not get decreased bone density. People in Europe and the northern hemisphere need more exposure to sun to remain healthy, especially in winter. They cannot tolerate very hot sun as they have melanin deficiency in their skin compared to us in the tropics. If they migrate to the tropics, after a few generations, their progeny also would be dark skinned like us and vice versa.
 

However, the drug and cosmetic industry funded research has created a myth that sunlight is bad for the skin and might produce skin cancers, etc. If that were true most of us and all Africans should be full of skin cancers. They sell billions of dollars’ worth skin care products—most of which contain dangerous carcinogenic chemicals. Independent research has proven that the skin cancer increase in incidence is basically due to these chemicals and not the sun.
 

Bio-mimicry is the new name for learning science from nature. Nature does not do any activity that is destructive to humans and other inhabitants of the planet. Sunlight, by no stretch of imagination, can be bad for us. Too much of anything is bad anyway. Lot of our elderly folk would do well to expose themselves to good sunlight to keep their health in good shape and specially their bone health. The need for taking artificial vitamin D3 and the dangerous calcium salts could all be stopped if we expose ourselves to sun without any cream. Even dark glasses might not be good for the eyes as our pineal gland and the pituitary gland get their stimulus from the sunlight entering the eyes!
 

Incidentally oral calcium supplements have come under great research and now we know that calcium does lot of damage to the health. Firstly, calcium intake as a chemical only increases the calcium loss in the urine—so called calcium induced calcium loss. At the end of the day one might end up with negative calcium balance. In addition calcium intake has been shown to increase vessel wall calcium deposits worsening atherosclerosis. But the calcium deposits in the heart vessels might stimulate heart attacks also!
 

Now comes another study from Edinburgh University where scientists observed that sunlight stimulates human cells to increase the production of nitric oxide, the best elixir for vessel health. Nitric oxide is the stuff that keeps our blood vessels relaxed and open thus lowering blood pressure and increasing blood flow to all organs. The ultraviolet light in the sun's rays stimulate the nitric oxide synthase in the cell cytoplasm which in turn switches on the production of more nitric oxide (NO), the health giving endothelium relaxing factor (EDRF).
 

The same rays also stimulate two other vital enzymes in the cell cytoplasm—HSP 70 and VEGF synthase. The first one, otherwise called the stress relaxing protein (SRP) helps many body functions while VEGF protein encourages neo-vascularisation, new vessel forming for collateral circulation, very good for the heart. All in all sunlight is the best tonic that you can get for free! It beats all the pharma giants in its protean actions in the body from germ killing to cell stimulation and supplying bone density promoter vitamin D3.
 

Philosophically the sun teaches a very good health giving lesson to mankind. Now we know that the mind runs the body, the health of the mind is vital to our health. Negative thoughts are the killers, jokingly put—it is NOT what you eat that kills; it is what eats you that kills you. Among the negative thoughts the worst killers are hatred, greed, jealousy, anger and pride. The sun teaches two important lessons: sun does not make any difference and shines on everyone, rich or poor showing us the universality of existence. The more important lesson that the sun teaches us is humility, the kingpin for good health and happiness. The sun looks very big as he emerges on the eastern horizon but as he goes up he becomes smaller and smaller thereby telling mankind that the higher you rise in life, the humbler you become. I think this is the best advice that one could give for keeping good health. When we become truly humble, according to Indian traditions humility if the highest education, we get rid of all negative thoughts, the true causes of illness and pain.
 

Sun is the be all and end all of all existence. The sun has been burning for so long without exhausting his fuel!
 

(Professor Dr BM Hegde, a Padma Bhushan awardee in 2010, is an MD, PhD, FRCP (London, Edinburgh, Glasgow & Dublin), FACC and FAMS. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Science of Healing Outcomes, chairman of the State Health Society's Expert Committee, Govt of Bihar, Patna. He is former Vice Chancellor of Manipal University at Mangalore and former professor for Cardiology of the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, University of London.)