Sun damage erased! What did it?

I’ve never been a believer in using sun screen, and I’ve worked in the sun for most of the last two decades.  Sun damage first began to show with an irregular brown spot on my forehead about 15 years back.  By 8 years ago, age 45, I had sun damage on my face so thick that I had a faint reverse raccoon mask, with only the skin around my eyes unaffected.  And yet, over the following two years, all the spots faded away, so gradually that I didn’t notice when it happened.  They have not returned; my skin is clear.

            My skin care program has not changed; I have slathered myself with olive oil after bathing since age 21, and I have firm skin and few wrinkles as a result.  But that didn’t prevent sun damage, and couldn’t clear it up.  I’ve always worn sunhats, and added long sleeves since living in Arizona.  The answer has to be diet.

            I made several changes of diet in the year or so before the spots faded away.  I switched from Wheat Thins and zucchini relish for lunch to sesame-oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookies and cashews, and started taking my daily cayenne for arthritis in a tall glass of orange-cranberry juice, rather than in tomato juice or relish.

            I had already been taking cayenne for several years, so I don’t think that’s a factor.  I hadn’t been drinking much orange juice for many years, so that’s a possibility.  I mix a bit of Knudsen’s Just Cranberry juice into it to keep my bladder healthy and cut the sweetness, about one ounce in twelve; that’s another possibility.

            Another good possibility is the sesame seeds in the sesame-oatmeal cookies, which had not previously been a regular part of my diet.  Sesame is high in calcium, iron, and is 50% oil that’s high in anti-oxidants.  I’ve recently tired of these cookies, and moved on to sesame-whole wheat crackers and tahini (sesame butter)/peanut butter cookies.  Tahini mixes well with peanut butter; you can’t taste the difference using half tahini, half peanut .

            Although I’ve always loved cashews, I had never before made them a regular part of my diet, but they have been ever since.  Their flavor is not as delicious as when I ate them only occasionally, which could mean that they contain something I was lacking of which I now have plenty.  They have high-quality saturated fat and protein; they also contain B17, the anti-cancer vitamin.  (Search World Without Cancer, book or movie.)

            Any one of four foods might have cleaned up my sun damage: orange juice; cranberry juice; sesame; or cashews.  It could also be a combination of 2 or more.  I’d like to know if anyone else has had sun damage spontaneously disappear, and had recently added any of these foods to one’s diet.  Or, conversely, anyone who has such damage could try one food at a time to see what disappears.  

Anti-inflammatory Foods for Arthritis

Cabbage poultice, capsaicin creams, and ibuprofen are good first aids for arthritis, but it’s a chronic condition that requires chronic treatment.  The problem is chronic inflammation in the body, affecting particular joints.  Other diseases, like heart disease and diabetes, are also caused or exacerbated by inflammation, so if one can get inflammation well controlled, one can be much healthier.

            The first arthritis-stopping food that I became acquainted with was cayenne pepper.  An old man in Arizona told me that he used to have arthritis so bad that he could hardly move his fingers; at the time I met him, his hands worked fine, panning gold in cold water.  He said that he stopped it with a teaspoon of cayenne a day, chugged quickly in a small glass of tomato juice.  He said that it took a month to take effect, and a month to wear off when he discontinued it.

            Some years later, I got hit with arthritis pain in my hip—an incredible stabbing, grinding pain I’d never felt before.  I used cabbage poultice on it for a few days, but immediately started taking cayenne, ½ teaspoon in a small tomato juice.  It gave me heartburn.  Cayenne pills came apart on the way down and burned in my esophagus.  I eventually found that ¼ teaspoon in a tall glass of orange juice (with a shot of Knudsen’s Just Cranberry juice for my bladder; I call it Crazy Juice) did not give me heartburn, though it’s a spicy drink.  It only took a week for the pain to completely go away; I was not as advanced a case as the old man.

            Since then, I’ve used other anti-inflammatory foods known to keep arthritis at bay.  I’ve been using more black cherry and tart cherry juice lately than Crazy Juice; I got that remedy from the People’s Pharmacy column in the Oregonian.  I mix a cup of juice half-and-half with Mountain Dew; it tones down the richness of Knudsen’s Just Black Cherry and Just Tart Cherry, and lends a sparkle to the taste, taking off the vegetable edge.

            Turmeric also keeps coming up in the People’s Pharmacy as a powerful anti-inflammatory.  It is the yellow colored spice in mustard, relish, pickles, and curry powder, among other uses.  I don’t like curry, but I put a ¼ teaspoon of turmeric with the ½ teaspoon of cinnamon in the sesame-oatmeal cookies that, along with cashews and dried apples, are a staple of my mid-day diet, and I also eat the occasional sweet pickle or my homemade zucchini relish.

            Still, cayenne in Crazy Juice seems to be most effective for me.  If I leave it out of my diet for long, I start getting odd pains in my joints, and soreness in my vulnerable hip—they just started up again yesterday.