The founder of one of North America’s leading vitamin D advocacy groups is putting the message about sunscreen in simple terms: If you wear it, you’re blocking vitamin D production.

“Remember, our ancestors lived naked in the sun for several million years,” Dr. John cannell, founder of The Vitamin D Council, writes on the Council’s independent web site. “Then 50,000 years ago, some of us migrated north and south to places with less sun. Then we put on clothes, started working inside and living in cities where buildings blocked the sun. Then we started traveling in cars instead of walking, or riding horses, and glass blocked even more of the UVB in the sunlight.”

Cannell continues, “Then, only a few years ago, we started actively avoiding the sun and putting on sunblock. All this time we humans have been steadily reducing the tissue levels of the most potent steroid hormone in our bodies, one with powerful anti-cancer properties. The really significant reductions in sunlight exposure have occurred since the industrial revolution, just the time the “diseases of civilization” like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer seem to have greatly increased. Pretty frightening when you think about it.”

To visit Cannell’s web site click here.