Why Is a New Sunscreen Ingredient “Big News” When the Real Story Is That You’ve Been TRICKED into Being Afraid of the Sun?
Let me ask you something. If an institution approved a product that was later found to cause cancer - not just once, but repeatedly - at what point do you stop treating its approvals as gospel?
That’s not a hypothetical. The FDA has approved numerous substances that were subsequently linked to serious harm, including several sunscreen chemical filters like oxybenzone and octinoxate, which have raised flags for hormone disruption and potential carcinogenicity. Yet last week, headlines celebrated the FDA’s approval of a new sunscreen ingredient called bemotrizinol (BEMT) - the first new sunscreen active ingredient approved in over 25 years - as though it were a moonshot achievement. Europe and Asia have been using it for decades while American consumers were locked out, not for safety reasons, but because our regulatory framework had essentially frozen in place since the late 1990s. (FDA _1)
And that’s supposed to be reassuring?
The Bigger Question Nobody Is Asking
While Google Trends is lighting up with searches from “sunscreen enthusiasts” this week, I want to ask the question that’s conspicuously absent from every mainstream health headline: Why are we still having a cultural conversation about blocking the sun instead of learning to work with it?
We have been sold a story - aggressively, profitably - that the sun is an enemy. That the source of all life on this planet, the thing that makes bees fly, flowers open, crops grow, and energizes every living thing it touches, is something you need chemical armor to survive. And a remarkable number of otherwise intelligent people have accepted this without much examination, myself included - for a time.
I’m not here to tell you to go bake yourself on a rooftop. I’m telling you the conversation is far more nuanced than “apply SPF 50 or get cancer,” and it’s worth digging into.
Your body doesn’t just tolerate sun exposure - it requires it. The creation of Vitamin D is, by any honest description, a form of photosynthesis: your skin uses UVB radiation to convert 7-dehydrocholesterol into a compound that eventually becomes both a critical antioxidant and a hormone involved in immune regulation, mood, bone density, and cellular repair. FACT.
We are not separate from the natural world. We are woven into it, and from it.
There is a growing, quietly expanding contingent of people who are rediscovering what most of human history took for granted - that the sun disinfects, recharges, and strengthens the body when met with wisdom and intention rather than fear and separation.
My wife said it best. She casually walked in the door recently, looked at me, and said: “Did you go outside today? The sun’s out - you should get in on that.” God bless that woman. She’s right so many times in so many ways and she loves to remind me of that.
My Summer as a Roman Carpenter (And What It Taught Me About the Sun)
In the summer of CORVID19 (inside joke) I spent months outside, alone, building a 12 foot x 24 foot timber frame greenhouse from scratch. Chainsaw, hand tools, heavy beams - the full primal experience. The beams I was crafting were far too large to work with inside my garage, so everything happened outdoors, under open sky, for weeks on end.
Before I got smart enough to mount solar sail cloths overhead from tall posts (again, I'm NOT against common sense protection from overcharging your solar battery, AKA, your skin), I got absolutely cooked one afternoon. Not blistered, thank God, but severely sunburnt - the kind where you know you’re going to pay for it and you start running through your mental index of remedies fast.
I was prepped for this exact situation, because I had a gallon of organic aloe vera juice and 100ml of DMSO in my kitchen just waiting for an excuse to do some skin alchemy. If you haven't read Amanda Vollmer's Book, Healing With DMSO, here is your sign to snag a copy of it (click the link).
Why did I choose DMSO and aloe for my homemade sunburn remedy? Because DMSO has been studied in burn and wound care since the 1960s, and the early results were compelling enough that researchers tested it alongside conventional burn treatments as a delivery vehicle to drive antimicrobial agents deeper into damaged tissue.
The FDA briefly suppressed its broader use in the late 1960s (a story worth looking into on its own) but research continued, and what emerged pointed to some genuinely remarkable properties: reduced blister formation, accelerated wound closure, and the up-regulation of fibroblasts, the cells responsible for rebuilding damaged skin. This is a simple sulfur compound derived from the lignin in trees, a cousin to the more widely known MSM (methylsulfonylmethane), and we are barely scratching the surface of what it can do. I have a personal story about the first time I used it on a sunburn - and it’s the reason it earned a permanent place in our home remedy kit:
I want to share my personal results using a simple 20% DMSO and 80% aloe vera juice solution applied topically. This was August 2020. At the time I had one blister on each hand from digging fence post holes - 3 to 4 cm wide, intact, and angry looking. After washing with natural soap (critical: DMSO should only ever go on clean skin, away from synthetic fabrics), I poured the solution into my palm and rubbed it across my shoulders, neck, face, and arms - the full surface of the burn. I applied it once during the day and again before bed.
The next morning the redness had visibly reduced and my skin looked tan. The blisters on both hands were completely gone. I did not expect that.
My hypothesis is that DMSO’s ability to move efficiently through skin layers - drawing whatever is mixed with it along for the ride - also helped rebalance the interstitial fluid trapped between skin layers that gives blisters their raised, painful appearance. By helping that plasma find its way back where it belongs, and by stimulating circulation and lymphatic activity, my body recovered faster than I thought possible.
I’ve since heard similar accounts from others. I’ll always frame this as personal experience, not clinical proof - but it’s worth looking into yourself. That’s the whole point of this blog. Not to fight the system or rail against good doctors doing honest work, but to hand you tools for your own inquiry and build the kind of resilience that doesn’t depend on anyone’s permission.
That’s also why I don’t hide how I make the products I sell. If you want to make this at home yourself, I genuinely encourage it. And if you want to use what our family reaches for every summer, I’ll tell you exactly what it is and how to get it.
What We Actually Use: The REGENERATE Protocol
[Coming soon to the USA, Available in Australia and New Zealand currently.]
Our family doesn’t use conventional sunscreen. For everyday sun exposure, we use tallow or coconut oil. For long days working hard in direct sun, we cover up with appropriate clothing. And when we need something more, we use a natural sunscreen with non-nano zinc oxide - yes, it leaves a white cast on everything you touch, but it works and it doesn’t absorb into your bloodstream. But sometimes the sun forces us to come to terms with our limits and humbly accept that those of us with a fairer complexion don't have the genetic advantage for all day sun exposure like the darker races do. That's when the skin repair cream comes into the picture.
Regenerate came out of necessity - born from that sunburn during the greenhouse build and refined through 6 years of real-world use: at outdoor gatherings and festivals, and most recently put to the test by my sister-in-law on a trip to Fiji where she, predictably, got sunburned. It works.
The formula is what I’d call an alchemist’s upgrade on plain ol aloe vera gel and here are the primary active ingredients:
Aloe Vera Juice
This is the foundation, and we don't thin it out with water, ever. Far beyond just cooling the burn, aloe vera is a dense matrix of healing compounds:[pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih +1]
• Acemannan (a polysaccharide) - known to stimulate immune response and accelerate wound healing
• Aloin and emodin - anti-inflammatory compounds that reduce redness and swelling
• Vitamins C and E - antioxidants that protect against UV-induced oxidative damage and support collagen synthesis
• Zinc and selenium - trace minerals that support tissue repair and are in short supply in our food.
• Bradykinase - an enzyme that directly reduces skin inflammation [pubmed article]
• Gibberellins and auxins — plant growth hormones shown to stimulate new cell growth and reduce scar formation [yemenjmed]
Comfrey Oil
Comfrey has been used for centuries as a wound herb, and modern research backs up why:
• Allantoin - (water soluble not available in oil extract form) the standout compound; promotes rapid cell proliferation and tissue regeneration, speeds up the skin’s natural turnover cycle
• Rosmarinic acid - a potent anti-inflammatory and antioxidant that calms the post-burn inflammatory cascade
• Symphytine and echimidine (be aware of pyrrolizidine alkaloids, and the hype around it from the "establishment") - support connective tissue rebuilding
Calendula Oil
One of the most time-tested botanical skin remedies on the planet. Calendula (Calendula officinalis) has been used for hundreds of years across European folk medicine for skin damage, wounds, and inflammation:
• Flavonoids (isorhamnetin, quercetin, narcissin) - powerful antioxidants that neutralize free radicals caused by UV damage
• Triterpenoids - shown to stimulate collagen production and accelerate tissue repair
• Polysaccharides - provide deep hydration and support the skin’s immune response
• Essential oils - carry mild antimicrobial properties, protecting compromised skin from secondary infection
Rounded out with DMSO as a carrier that drives the actives deeper into the tissue, shea butter for occlusive fat-layer protection, and coconut oil for its own antimicrobial and moisturizing properties - REGENERATE gives sun-stressed skin everything it needs: antioxidants, growth factors, anti-inflammatory compounds, hydration, and fats.
Your skin is not as fragile as "the experts" want you to believe. It is one of the most sophisticated repair systems in nature. Sometimes it just needs the right raw materials to do what it already knows how to do.
A Word on Trusting Yourself
Building, growing, and creating has become more of a lifestyle than it is a hobby. And while I still like to keep up on recent scientific finds and interesting new ideas, I am keen to remember that you don't have to wear a lab coat and have a degree to practice science. It is as natural as trial and error, and sometimes involves healthy creativity applied to dusty and forgotten research.
The scientific landscape as we know it is changing fast. The funding structures, the “approved sources,” the research infrastructure built around pharmaceutical profit is losing popular approval, one pharmaceutical scandal and "turbo cancer link" discovery at at a time.
I’m not here to make you afraid. I’m not here to stir distrust for its own sake. I’m simply pointing out that the emperor occasionally forgets to get dressed before parading through the market square, and that noticing this is not paranoia, it’s pattern recognition.
Through time and experience I learned to trust my own judgment when the data in front of me is clear, despite the herd of doctors and even my own colleagues pushing me to abide by a sometimes questionable doctrine (anyone remember the forced clot shot that wasn't officially "forced" and yet people were fined and threatened if they didn't succumb to the peer pressure and institutional badgering?) That lit a fire under me that has been my source of inspiration to write this blog.
I bring much needed independent observation, research, practical experience, and sometimes a stiff reminder to get out of the way of a giant whose beanstalk is about to snap.
If you’re reading this, you’re already open to that, and I appreciate your time.
Now close the tab.
Go outside. Bare feet in the soil if you can manage it. Let the sun find you through the trees.
Make today a little closer to heavenly.
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— Natural Artform | Holistic Knowledge Archive
Disclaimer: This article reflects personal experience and independent research. It is not medical advice. Consult a qualified practitioner before changing any health protocol.