Sesame Cleared Up My Sun Spots

A few years ago, I noticed that the sun spots that had gradually covered my face except around my eyes over a decade had spontaneously disappeared over a couple of years.  I had made several changes to my diet around that time, and was uncertain what did it.  It now seems likely that sesame did the job.

          At that time, I was eating sesame-oatmeal chocolate chip cookies with cranberries and pecans added.  You can make the same cookies by using the recipe on the Quaker oatmeal box and substituting sesame seeds for 1/3 of the oatmeal.   (I prefer white sesame to avoid the occasional moldy seed.)  I also cut the recipe in half and use a bit extra sugar, a bit less flour, and a smallish egg to make crisp, melt-in-the mouth cookies.

I moved on from those to tahini-peanut butter cookies with sesame seed and chocolate chips.  (Tahini is sesame butter; I substituted it for half the peanut butter.)  They were a bit less sweet and had more protein than oatmeal cookies.   Sesame seed is about half highly anti-oxidant oil.  Tahini has considerably less oil, just a half-inch on the top of the jar.  Your best bet for anti-oxidants is to eat the seeds.  For calcium, the butter is more concentrated.

          But my cavities got so bad at one point that I couldn’t eat cookies because the sugar hurt my teeth, and I started making sesame-whole wheat crackers, inspired by a cracker named Ak Mak.  I made them with fresh-ground wheat like my cookies, layered with honey butter and sprinkled with sea salt and raw sugar, to get my calcium and anti-oxidants. 

My teeth got fixed, but the crackers spoiled my taste for cookies and for most other grain-based snack foods: cookies were too sweet; other snacks are too salty or spicy.   Organic wheat made them even tastier.  They are so crispy and delicious that they are addictive, but there is a reason that crackers are not generally made at home: they are highly labor intensive, rolling out dough paper thin and baking it to dryness.  Manufacturers use big machines and ovens as long as a football field to make crackers. 

After a while, I got tired of 5-6 hour weekly cracker-making sessions on Sundays and stopped making them, until I noticed a sun spot forming on my cheek.  I’d found the reason for their disappearance!   I ended up cutting the recipe in half and making them in 3 hour sessions, 2-3 times a week, so I could have both my daily anti-oxidant crackers and my day of rest.  The spot disappeared. 

Eating these crackers is good for me; making them is taking way too much of my time and energy.  I need a partner who is willing to find a cracker maker who will make these crackers under our label:  Grandma Rycke’s Honey-Butter Sesame-Wheat Crisps.  We need to start selling them, so everyone can enjoy the taste and health benefits of sesame in a handy, healthy snack food.

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.