Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: For our call out this week, we'll try to make sense of the recent trend that has people abandoning the use of sunscreen based on claims that it's either not necessary or actually could be bad for your health or other things.
All right, Tunde, for this week's call out, we were discussing an article we saw that discussed the recent trend where you have people who have been just saying we're not gonna use sunscreen anymore.
They're saying that essentially it comes down to that the cons outweigh any pros. And so you've reasons, and I'll quote from the article, which we'll have in the show notes, reasons that range from the fact that it contains toxic chemicals that can cause skin cancer to the idea that it prevents vitamin D absorption. And also one of the reasons being that because our ancestors didn't use it. And we're looking at the piece we'll have in the show notes is a piece from Monica Cull, and it's in the Discover magazine. So, Tunde, your thoughts on this?
[00:00:58] Speaker B: I just find this to be another interesting journey down the rabbit hole of, you know, I was going to say pseudo science. I was going to say pseudo information at this point.
The.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: Or maybe partial.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: And I don't mean that. What was that?
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Partial information, maybe.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: Yeah, and that's what I mean. I don't mean to beat people up and all that. I know that there's a lot of coming at us as a society and all of them seem to be complex. And this is just another one like, okay, because you're dealing with several important things. One is something you're putting directly on your skin. So that now has a certain level of intimacy that, okay, I gotta trust a product just like food, I'm putting in my body. This thing I'm putting right on my skin.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Your skin is the largest organ and it does absorb things.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, anytime you read that something, just like if we read about something we eat and consume that you put in your body and you. And there's some suspicion as to. I mean, look how people reacted over being told they should take a vaccine during a global pandemic. Right. I mean, people took it very serious, what you're putting in your body. So the idea that there could be mixed information about what chemicals and their outcomes, you know, the outcomes on your body are in sunscreen, I think is another area ripe for disinformation and for confusion online. That's what I'll say.
It's just, you know, this is just One of many boxes, I'm sure that could be checked. As far as what, what can be murky in an online discussion.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think I, I look at this, it's interesting you raised the, the COVID thought because. Yes, I look at this similar to the, like the, what we saw with the discussion with the vaccine because it is a weighing of pros and cons. I would say that if you look at the details on sunscreen generally, particularly like the synthetic ones, that you can find some stuff where it's like, hey, this, some of this may not be the best thing for you, but the pros would be that it's blocking sun rays that could be really bad for you, cause cancer and stuff like that. And so you are trying. So then we as an individual or person, a person, as an individual is trying to weigh that pro and con, the societal advice is trying to boil down someone else's weighing of pros and cons for you and make it simple. And what we're seeing here is a pushback against that. And, but the concern being is that you may put you, you may push back against someone, some scientists or some official, you know, or maybe even somebody with a vested interest, somebody who sells sunscreen, boiling down all these pros and cons, trying to tell you not to worry about the cons and the pros and emphasizing the pros. And you, I can see how people would be offended by that and say, hey, hey, hold up. Why are you just telling me not to worry about anything bad? And that only thing I need to worry about is that if I block these sun rays and that'll give me a better chance to avoid skin cancer. And so I appreciate that that's a difficult thing when you're trying to manage a society with a lot of people that, yes, trying to give these super nuanced and detailed answers, you lose people with all the time, it's just like, hey, here's what you need to know. Boom. That's what a lot of people want. But you got to understand also, and it is understandable to me that you are going to have people wanting to ask questions or, or who are gonna question when you just say, hey, this is just, just like with the vaccine, when they say, hey, this is just what you need to do. And it's like, well, hold on, why do I just need to do that? And they wanna consider the pros and cons. But as you pointed out, the difficulty you have there is the difficulty of incomplete information. And so if you're trying to say, okay, I'm gonna do my own research, then you gotta make sure that you're getting enough information on the pros and the cons. If you do your own research, only look at the cons, then you'll be, you'll go one way because you didn't even look at the pros. So I think this presents an interesting dilemma in terms of how different people react to a society's dumbing down of information for them. You know, like, some people are gonna be like, okay, cool, that's all I need to know. I got it, I'm good to go. And then other people are like, well, hold on.
Why exactly do I need to do this? Explain to me why our ancestors didn't have to. If our ancestors didn't use sunscreen, why do I have to use sunscreen? Or to explain to me, hey, does this affect my body's ability to produce vitamin D? We know that in modern times nearly everybody is deficient. At least, you know, in American culture, nearly everybody is deficient on vitamin D. Does sunscreen have something to do with that? And then we've also seen things with contaminants or even purposeful ingredients and that may end up, you know, either when they combine with other ingredients or something like that. So there are things to learn. But I, I, and to be clear, you know, the, the article we're looking at lays out the reasons why, the, why sunscreen is important in despite these claims. But I don't think it's helpful necessarily to diminish people who want to ask the questions. But I think it's the people who want to ask the questions, it's very important for them to not kind of get emotionally attached to being a contrarian, because we see that also. And then it's just like they're just pushing back on everything because they've decided that they don't like the way that the authority, so to speak, is telling them they just got to do it.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Yeah, that's, that's where I think, you know, and as Americans, we already have a healthy distrust of government just in our culture. So, yeah, when, when you have the government telling you certain things, you know, some people just have a natural knee jerk reaction to want to not believe it. Others have more of a help like.
[00:06:19] Speaker A: Why and really want to know, like, you know, so, but that's, I think that's a minority of people though.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and others may have a healthy skepticism, and that's fine. And I think that, you know, the government also hasn't helped itself. Historically, because it's been, you know, it's been ripe with lobbying and things where we do know that there's evidence of whether it's food companies, tobacco. You know, we've got the history of the times when industry has won over the safety of the population. And so it's not unbelievable even for someone like me who does use sunscreen and who, you know, like you said, understands that I might, you know, there could be. Cause some. There could be some harm caused by this, but also there's. There's benefit to it. Just like I took the COVID vaccine from Pfizer. Same reason. I understand that not all vaccines are perfect and that not 100% of the population is. Is always safe when they take a vaccine, but also way better the other side of, you know, if I get Covid again. Cause I already had it once and I went to the hospital. I didn't want to go back to the hospital. So there. There are. And the idea of a free country is that I should be allowed to make this decision without being harassed by the government. And not necessarily tough.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: You know, remember during COVID you cited, like, different Supreme Court cases. You know, you went back and looked it up like, so can the government make you do that? I was like, oh, actually, yeah. Wow, they can. You know, so it was.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: But I want to read this.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: Societally, I think, is what makes it hard a lot of times dealing with these things. Societally.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's. And that's where I think the information ecosystem helps to fracture the ability to have a cohesive narrative for the authority. And I want to read this, though. Carl Sagan, who is the famous astronomer, has a quote, a famous quote, and it says, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
That it's pretty profound and pretty short.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: 20, 25, man.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: That's not how it works. But, James, that's what I'm saying is that if you think about the complexity of our world is my concern with a lot of this stuff. Everything is complex now. Think about the economy. Think about this conversations we're having now about tariffs and all this stuff.
There's just a lot of complexity that unless, you know, even someone like me that does this economic stuff for a living is still complex, I don't know at all. Then we move on to things like, you know, the geopolitics. You know, dude, what's going on in Ukraine or wherever else, China and Taiwan, that's all complex. And then you can. People move the goal post in those conversations. You know, some people started 10 years ago and other people cite stuff from 30 years ago, and for the average person weighing in on something they're seeing on YouTube, it's very difficult to discern what's what. And so now we're bringing it in with things like sunscreens and all that. I, I just, I feel like this is where a lot of people also just say, you know what? I'm checking out. It's too much. You know, it's as I, you know, whether sunscreen or not, I'm going to die one day anyway.
[00:09:17] Speaker A: So, yeah, I mean, well, there's that. I mean, I, I, I'm a person now. So you're a person that, like, now I'm more skeptical than you, for example, you know, but, like, we ended up in the same place on the vaccine because I'm like, all right, yeah, I think that one out of every 10,000 people getting a vaccine might have a problem. I'm willing to take that shot, that risk in that sense, you know what I'm saying? Like, okay, as long as I'm not one of those people. I also think that how you maintain your immune system and your body's ability to detoxify itself, which your body can do, will affect how vaccines can affect you as well, you know, like, so I, when I did the vaccine, I took very special care to make sure that I was doing a lot of things to help my body detox at that time and not doing things that would interfere with my body from detoxing. Like, I stopped drinking for a week. Like, all right, let me, let me make sure my body is functioning and can put anything that shouldn't be in there.
[00:10:01] Speaker B: I didn't do any of that.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: Well, that's because I'm a skeptic, though, because I'm trying to look a bunch of Zach Daniels. I don't get emotionally attached to the contra, you know, like, I just want to know, what can I, I'm a, what can I control kind of person, you know, so even with the sunscreen, I have looked closely at this over, let's say the past 10 years or so, not recently, because, you know, I kind of did it a while ago. And one of the things I learned, for example, is that food you eat can help with. You eat it internally, and it can give your skin more protection from the, from the sun, you know, so there's certain things you can eat. There's also things that you shouldn't eat, like if you're eating a bunch of oxidized oils, you know, if you're, you know, eating A bunch of fried food, for example, that weakens your skin ability to deal with sun rays naturally. So when people are like, oh, our ancestors did. I'm like, well, yeah, but they had completely different, you know, life lives than we did. They eat eight different. They ate natural foods. They didn't eat. They weren't going to McDonald's, you know what I'm saying? So, and not to knock McDonald's in general, but I'm just saying, like the. When you have a bunch of oxidized oils, that affects your skin's ability to deal with the sun rays. And then even with the vitamin D thing, I think that's very notable as well. You learn a lot. But I think that one of the most interesting things I learned about the vitamin D piece is that, like, there's the UV rays from the sun, which is what we're talking about here. There's different kinds of UV rays. Like, they're not all the same. It's the UVB radiation that you, you use to, to create the. Or to, to create vitamin D when it hits your sun, your skin. Excuse me, but the UVA ones are really, really bad for you, so to speak. They cause wrinkles. But one of the things I didn't know that I'd say I learned about 10, 12 years ago was that through glass. Glass blocks the UVB, so it blocks the good stuff and it only lets the bad stuff in. And so you can see that, like with truck drivers, you know, like, we're on the road a lot and they'll have certain part of their skin very wrinkled. So that's just, you know, looking at that kind of stuff. But none of that leads me to the conclusion that you just shouldn't use sunscreen. Like, yes, they are. There's potential for certain chemicals to not to be in there that may not be great for you. So one, either you gotta make sure that you have your, your, your body maintenance a certain way, or you can use options that don't have that. Like, because that's one nice thing about our market right now is that there are a lot of options where you can avoid certain products and so forth in what you eat or what you put on your skin. So I think that going from, hey, I have questions about this to, hey, I did. This is not needed or not necessary or anything or something I'm not going to do, that's where you get into that Sagan quote. Like, you need something pretty compelling to go to. I'm not going to use it at all. Versus, okay, I have Some, some, some. I, maybe I want to use this a little bit more intentionally or be more intentional about what I do use when I use it or other things that I can control. And that is, I think, is missing a lot of times when you hear people talk about this or when you hear. But, but that doesn't fit in a TikTok clip.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. And I think, you know, look for people that are skeptical to the point where they refuse to, to, to use these things, that's fine. Again, it's a free country. But then they, you know, they just need to acknowledge that they're putting themselves at risk to get skin cancer. Right. More so than, than, than had they used this type of thing. And that's why I say it's the.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: Same way that if you eat certain foods, you gotta acknowledge you're putting yourself at a greater risk to get cancer another way or other things. Like we make decisions all the time and a lot of times we make decisions not knowing the risks. But at least with that one, to your point, like, if I'm going to eschew a form of protection, may not be ideal, but I'm gonna eschew a form of protection. You get to make a conscious decision on, okay, well, I'll take my chances or I'm going to do a bunch of other things to try to mitigate that or whatever, but go ahead.
[00:13:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, but that's where I'm getting at is, is that because there's consequences for everything in our life. I mean, and that's what I mean by complex. I thought about this, I thought about this last night, making food at home for myself, that I have a water filter in my fridge door like most people with a fridge door water filter. So I stick my, my, my cup in there to get the fresh water and then I go, you know, before that I had the ice maker on. Then I'm thinking about it. I wonder. I don't think the water that goes into the ice maker is filtered. I think it's only filtered. That comes through my, my, you know, the little hose that goes, you know, that gives me the water. So as the ice cubes are melting, whatever water I thought I was having filtered with all the PFAs and all that out, you know, there's, there's, there's. Now the unfiltered ice cubes are dissipating into my filtered water and are causing my, in my experience of drinking water to be generally unfiltered then. And it's just like. So at some Point you got to acknowledge that again, we live in a world like I live in a city, right. We live in South Florida, big population, there's microplastics everywhere. This is just like at some point I'm not going to win this battle of trying to be super clean living in a large society like the one we live now. And we got to make these kind of choices of understanding that, you know, you're trying to do the best you can, but it's not going to be perfect and that some chemical out there is purity, can't.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: Absolute purity is probably not the best standard to walk around with in our modern society. Like unless you're going to move out to the middle of the world. Well, you can't.
[00:15:12] Speaker B: That's what I'm saying. It's just, yeah, like if, if you are living in a city or any suburban area, you are exposed to things.
[00:15:20] Speaker A: And so then it does become the question of, okay, so then therefore, what trade offs will I make and what trade offs will I not make? But to me, like I said, I found everything I've seen, like the place where you can exercise the most control, like your body is self healing and self, like cleaning, you know, internally. So giving your, it's setting your body up, giving it what it needs to detoxify, to heal and so forth to me is the biggest thing you can control because yeah, your exposure. Now obviously you control like don't eat out all the time or don't eat certain things, you know, go places and stuff like that. But you know, like that stuff is difficult in a social kind of environment. Like, oh, well I just don't eat out. Like it's like, well no, you cannot eat out most of the time, but sometimes you have social functions or this and that and whatever and you're not gonna, you can't control everything. So. But the thing like what you're doing as far as to maintain your body functioning, to repair, refresh, to detoxify, I found is the best kind of the best thing to do where you can maintain and constantly exert a level of control. But even with that, like there's, you're still limited, you know, like you said with the microplastic plastics, for example, like there's, there's certain ways, but I don't know that our bodies evolved to excrete.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: This one's easier though, James, I'm saying.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: It kind of this one, this one.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: But the sunscreen's easier because you could just not go outside, which is bad.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: For you in other ways.
[00:16:37] Speaker B: When you when you do just wear a burqa, man, they figured it out in the Middle East.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: Hey, well, they live in a place where there's a lot of sun though. You know, there's some benefit to that. You do that. You got a big hat and you know everything.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: I mean, it's, it's.
[00:16:49] Speaker B: But what do you say? Would you wear a burqa with a sombrero? Is that what you say? This, you know, that's not cool.
[00:16:56] Speaker A: No, no. And I think the other piece though on this is to always remember that we are dealing with incomplete information, you know, so the whole vitamin D thing, like, which I'm a big believer of, I remember that was one of those things that was found to be very helpful for fighting Covid also. But vitamin D is not something you can raise up and down like vitamin C, like vitamin D, you have to take over time and your body level. Your. The levels in your body will rise and then nick and hold as long as you do it over time, as long and you continue to take it or get the sunlight. But that wasn't something that people walk around knowledge of. In 1970, people didn't think it was a problem at all to be inside and be inside all the time for the most part. So I'm sure there's something 20 years from now that we'll know that'll be like, oh, wow, wow. We can really make a big difference from a health standpoint if we just do blank. You know, like inflammation right now is kind of all the rage, you know, with the GLP1s and all that and how they tamp down inflammation and then you tamp down inflammation and all this other great stuff starts happening in your body. As long as you keep inflammation down, which again, you know, your body can, you know, help your body, you know, with the anti inflammatory stuff and you might be on to something, but nonetheless, like that's something that focus on inflammation is something that is trending up right now. It wasn't something people were focused on in large part 30 years ago. So I'm sure over the next 10, 20 years we'll learn even more like, hey, if we do this, do that, these interventions can help a lot. So again, purity may not be the standard, but you always can strive to be better. But then it's just a matter of picking your battles and then again not striving for absolute purity all the time. So I. You got anything else on this?
[00:18:33] Speaker B: No, I don't. Because that's on you to be striving for all this. Good. You know, I'm gonna keep drinking and smoking weed. That's what I'm doing.
I have all this.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: I'm on my own.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: I'm on my own and I'm gonna.
[00:18:45] Speaker A: Keep slapping my own.
[00:18:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Just slapping sunscreen on all day, like, you know, I got a bald head, bro. I can't have all those spots. You know, we live in Florida, so I gotta, you know, so. Yeah.
[00:18:57] Speaker A: Hey, you're a boater, man. So that's the most interesting thing about me. Like, when you're on the water, how you get the sun coming down and then depending on where you are, you get it coming back, reflecting back off of the water, too.
[00:19:07] Speaker B: Yeah, man. It's that Jesus effect, bro. It's awesome. Like, next thing you know, why wait till you see me walk on water? That's pretty cool too.
[00:19:16] Speaker A: So you are striving for something.
[00:19:18] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a different show, though.
We'll give them that one on the next show. Yeah, there we go.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: So. But I think we can wrap from there. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this. Call out, subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think. Send it to a friend. Till next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:19:31] Speaker B: I'm tund.
[00:19:33] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk soon.
