WIR: Melanoma – Over Sunned or Under Repaired?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3730314/?fbclid=IwAR3GgibMc7f7RDdVsT7y6GgK-iHsfHxcmcOZT-Cgrbjwmt9kQB1Tbp7fNb0#!po=8.78378

This is a fantastic study using non-medical methods to look for possible root causes for a medical phenomena. These researchers used an industrial sector technique of looking for correlation based on different pre-suppositions and seeing how well the data fits the theory.

If you ask ANYBODY, and especially doctors, what causes skin cancer, they will tell you sun exposure. They will tell you to avoid the sun, lather yourself in sunscreen, and wear sunglasses and long sleeves. The problem is much more complex than this, and this recommendation doesn’t even jive if we look at this through an evolutionary lens. Humans are REQUIRED to be in the sun. But we can go into that later when I try to convince you to get your daily dose of sun exposure. Back to this paper.

Melanoma (a skin cancer) is universally ascribed to too much sun exposure. Mounting evidence is pointing at other root causes, and much like cholesterol, the sun is getting blamed for something that humans are doing.

The authors of the paper took various theories of the explosion of melanoma in nordic countries throughout the 20th century. They framed their search in the following way:

1. State the problem
2. Specify facts about the problem
3. Identify possible causes
4. Evaluate possible causes
5. Confirm true cause

They looked at the following possible root causes, and then tried to fit the explosion of the disease to these factors.

• Sun exposure (by tracking when people started jet-setting in the 60’s to sunny vacation
• The prevalence of cars being owned
• The installation of FM radio towers in city centers (!!!), and sleeping on wire spring mattresses (which are radio wave collectors)

Data

First, where is melanoma spread throughout the country?

So it’s unevenly distributed? What else is going on in these city centers? Let’s look at FM radio broadcast towers.

Hmmm…. So where there’s an increased density of radio waves, there is a higher melanoma risk. Well, maybe that’s coincidence. Is it just melanoma, or are other cancers increasing at the same time, and at what rate?

Ok. So maybe it’s not just sun. So how closely related is this FM frequency ‘smog’ appearing to the incidence of melanoma?

That’s damning. Now, lets look at Japan’s incidence of breast cancer and melanoma as they transitioned to internal spring mattresses.

So are you telling me that this radio frequency ‘smog’ that we are living in on a daily basis with WIFI, Cell Phones, FM broadcasts might be impacting how our cells function at a mitochondrial, replication level? Well, it certainly seems that way.

Here’s what the authors conclude:

This review of facts regarding melanoma strongly indicates that the main problem is not too many skin cell damages, but rather too few repairs, where repair here refers to both DNA repair, apoptosis and/or influence from immunosurveillance. … Outdoor workers tend to have a reduced risk of getting melanoma compared with indoor workers. While a reduced DRC has been shown to be a risk factor in several cancers, the studies by Landi et al. [16] and Matta et al. [17] did not show a statistical significant difference between melanoma cases and controls. …

if the increase was due to travel to sunnier resorts from the beginning of the 60s, then the melanoma incidence would have had to be over 100 times higher among those who could afford the tickets than among the rest of the population, but no such strange difference has been reported. Exposure to UVA and UVB radiation has been found to be a major contributor to the initiation of melanoma [18], but has not been shown to explain the trend changes since the mid-20th century. …

Actually, sun tanning supports the production of an important hormone, vitamin D, and the net effect of the sunshine is always that people are healthier in the summer time than in the winter. The increase at winter time in both sick-days and mortality is also due to respiratory tract infections that always are more common in that time of the year. Figure 23 gives the number of people on sick leave in Sweden per month.
Figure 23

…

When the problem of increasing melanoma rates became obvious, the authorities pointed at the sun, and suddenly a multi-billion $ market opened for the sun-block cream industry. At the same time the telecom market flourished and the air became filled with many other types of radiation apart, from UV-radiation from the Sun. The economic interests in blaming the Sun for the increasing rates of melanoma became astronomical, and lobbying experts guided our politicians and authorities along the ways that best suited their interests.
From Figure 9 we can see that melanoma has been on the rise again since 2005. A more detailed investigation shows that a reasonable part of this increase happens to take place in the face or on the head area. At the same time the use of mobile phones has merely exploded…

The fact that also the incidence of breast cancer and lung cancer can be associated to melanoma strongly supports the hypothesis of a common factor. Both breast cancer and melanoma have a left dominance of around 10%, indicating that a good and simple way of reducing the cancer risk is to get rid of the metal spring mattress and only sleep on non-reflecting futons or soft mattresses on wooden slats [11]. …

What to do?

I think that the melanoma is a combination of not enough sun exposure, too much estrogenic sun block, exposure to radio waves. I’m only over the last few months aware of the coorelation between disease and radio waves, but this paper is powerful. My near term plans:

• Put my WIFI router and modem on a timer so it shuts off at night
• Turn cell phone to airplane mode at night
• But a meter to sense the radio frequency hot spots, especially around fans and appliances to try to make sure they’re away from where we sleep.
• But an electromagnetic absorbing carbon based paint as a base layer in the bedrooms to try to insulate my family from this stuff.
• Encourage people to not keep their cell phone in their pocket (or sports bra) when out and about.
• Research more.