How to Avoid Pigmentation

There's one thing I've understood clearly for a long time now, and yet I don't do enough to share it with the world.

The world splits into two camps:

People who chase the sun, and people who fear it.

What the sun-chasers have in common is that they can heal under it, spend time in it, and feel good because of it.

And the others?

They burn easily, develop pigmentation, turn red, and the sun becomes a source of dread because for them it really does cause damage.

So what's the difference?

There's the matter of habit. People who get a lot of sun also build up tolerance. Someone with very fair skin who rarely gets sun will burn the moment they step into it, but someone who visits the sun regularly will find that it doesn't have to create harsh sensations.

And in a world where we've been trained to work from home and fear the sun, of course people are going to be exposed to it less and less.

Then there's the physiology of each one of us. And where does that physiology come from? Among other things, from what we feed ourselves.

Most of the ancient religions worshipped the sun.

So how is it that the very same sun scorches and harms the people who meet it today? The answer hides inside a far less sacred connection, one forged over the last 60 years.

The sun wasn't always linked to skin cancer.

Over the last few decades we've seen a drastic drop in sun exposure. Not only do most people fear the sun, we also spend most of our waking hours indoors, and yet skin cancer cases only keep climbing.

The most important sentence in my view, the one everyone has to understand, is that nature doesn't make mistakes. Nature responds to our actions.

When human beings meet the divine sun, are they not the same human beings who met the sun 60 years ago?

The answer is no. So what changed? The answer is very simple. Diet.

And to be precise, refined seed oils.

One of the most drastic changes of the last 60 years is that human beings swapped the natural fats they'd consumed throughout evolution for refined oils called seed oils.

Canola oil, soybean oil, grapeseed oil, sunflower oil, corn oil and the like are all oils created through complex chemical processes, sometimes from genetically engineered crops, at high heat, and in recent years they've come to be considered the number one dietary cause of disease.

Why are they so toxic? Studies show that in their production they become oxidizing and inflammatory for us. They're considered an ultra-inflammatory food (high in omega-6). When we put them into our bodies they create free radicals, and studies show it can take years for them to leave the body.

So human beings started feeding themselves unnatural substances (nature responds), and we start getting harmed.

Instead of our diet being built on antioxidant foods, the Western diet is built on inflammatory, oxidizing foods.

Seed oils have been linked to cancer, gut inflammation, diabetes, heart disease, fertility problems, brain damage and of course skin damage too.

The thing is that when our body is loaded with seed oils, and so are our cells, including our skin cells, our skin burns faster and damage gets done to skin and health.

One of the main mechanisms by which UV light harms the skin is through oxidation and free radicals.

And sensitivity to UV light increases with seed oil consumption.

Yet nobody puts two and two together. People keep talking about how dangerous the sun is, but nobody stops to ask why.

We accept everything as settled fact, never wondering why one person develops a disease and another doesn't.

So you already know that seed oils make you burn in the sun. But the harm of seed oils knows no bounds.

But what about pigmentation? Why do some people develop pigmentation and others don't?

Let me present you with one more of the harms that turn up from consuming seed oils:

Seed oil spots.

Not all skin spots are created equal, and in certain cases freckle-like spots can be a sign of seed oil poisoning. You may have heard them called "liver spots" or "age spots," but I prefer seed oil spots, which points correctly to their cause.

What if there were a pigment, created from oxidized seed oils, that accumulates in the skin and creates freckle-like spots?

It turns out there is such a substance, and it's called lipofuscin. Here's what we know about it:

Lipofuscin is the name given to fine yellow-brown pigment granules made of fat-containing residues of lysosomal digestion. It's considered one of the pigments associated with aging, found in the liver, kidneys, heart muscle, retina, adrenal glands, nerve cells and ganglion cells.

Lipofuscin appears to be a product of the oxidation of unsaturated fatty acids. It's known to contain sugars and metals, including mercury, aluminum, iron, copper and zinc, and it's made up of oxidized proteins as well as fats.

Why is it made up of all these toxins?

Lipofuscin is a byproduct of "oxidation of unsaturated fatty acids," meaning fat oxidation, seed oil rot combined with heavy metals like iron and aluminum that accumulate in the body together.

Lipofuscin causes macular degeneration, which is also caused by seed oil consumption.

Lipofuscin causes Alzheimer's, which we also know is linked to seed oil (and sugar) consumption.

This is a troubling discovery, and it appears to meet every criterion needed to explain our seed oil spots. Lipofuscin causes brown pigmentation in the skin (and in other tissues), and it's the byproduct of seed oil oxidation.

What this means is that it will mainly affect people living in industrialized countries, and it will grow with age and with total sun exposure, which is exactly what we see with seed oil spots.

These aren't freckles; they're liver spots, what I call Seed Oil Spots. And while seed oil spots only show on the skin, by the time you can see them on the outside, the rest of the body probably contains them too.

These little balls of seed oil rot and toxic heavy metals have been found in eye, nerve, liver and brain cells, but they likely damage all the soft tissues in the body. Some people have even claimed that IBS/leaky gut is really just lipofuscin in the intestines.

So where do we encounter seed oils? Almost every time we eat out. Beyond fried food made with seed oils (they used to fry in beef tallow), nearly every restaurant cooks with seed oils because they're cheap, and the food industries slip them into most processed foods, even into milk substitutes (read the ingredient lists).

What can you do? From accounts I've read online, people who stopped consuming seed oils experienced a reduction in their pigmentation spots, and some saw them disappear entirely. One more thing is that lipofuscin is reduced by vitamin E, which clears out the seed oil rot. Since it's a strong antioxidant, it can be found in certain fish, avocado, mango, pumpkin and more.

I created Gut Rules, an online nutrition course, to help people understand how to heal the body through food without being dependent on anyone else. It happens when we start to understand the food we eat, the effects of food combinations, and the signals the body gives us and how to work with them in our favor.

It's an empowering, instructive experience that comes from learning, experimenting and a new adventure. There's nothing more fun, nothing that brings more fresh energy into life, than learning something new and doing something good and empowering for yourself alone. Knowledge that improves who you are for the better, because you'll know what's good and right for you.

A change in diet improved my health, but it didn't end there at all.

My self-worth improved, my confidence rose, and my experience of life became more and more positive.