Image of the Week: Creature of the Sun
© 2021 D. Yael Bernhard
In the 2014 biographical drama film "Mr. Turner," the famous British landscape painter sits up in bed at the moment of his death, points straight ahead out the window, and cries out, "God is the sun!"
That scene made an impression on me. It also puzzled me, at the time. I thought of the sun as something to avoid – a source of skin cancer. I thought of the leaves of plants as mini solar panels, gathering sunlight to make chlorophyll and other phytonutrients they need. But not us – we're animals.
Recently I learned that mushrooms, when exposed to the sun for several hours, have the ability to hyper-accumulate vitamin D from sunlight. Pretty cool.
I imagined all these nutrients traveling up the food chain and reaching animals and people through the foods we eat.
In the last year, I've realized our relationship to the sun is more direct – for we, too, have skin like solar panels, absorbing sunlight in order to produce cholecalciferol – Vitamin D. Cholecalciferol is crucial for human health and strong immunity. The "chole" part of that word refers to the cholesterol in our skin with which ultraviolet light rays interact. This is just one of many positive roles that cholesterol plays in our bodies. Cholecalciferol governs the mineralization of our bones and teeth; regulates our calcium and phosphorus levels; and is indispensable to the proper functioning of cells in all body tissues, including muscles, nerves, and glands. It is unique among the nutrients in that the body can synthesize what it needs from nothing more than sunlight – making it a "non-essential" nutrient (not derived from food).
Yet vitamin D is as essential to life as the sun itself. Numerous studies (summarized here) have proven the efficacy of vitamin D against COVID-19 and other viruses, as both preventive and treatment. 73% of severe COVID infections are in people who are deficient in vitamin D. Conversely, 86% of COVID infections in people with sufficient vitamin D are mild or asymptomatic. It's a game-changer.
Tragically, more than half the American population is deficient in vitamin D. In the 1918 pandemic, that number was close to 100% due to the precipitous rise in indoor factory work during WWI. People did not know about vitamin D a century ago. Rickets – the bone disease of children born to severely vitamin D-deficient mothers – was widespread, especially in cities.
If you have light skin, 20 minutes of sunlight on your face, arms, neck, and hands between 11am and 2pm is enough to create sufficient cholecalciferol between spring and fall equinox. If you have dark skin, you may need up to three hours (I can't find exact guidelines). In the winter months, only the southernmost latitudes of the United States provide enough sunlight to synthesize sufficient vitamin D. It's crucial to supplement.
Learning about all this in a college nutrition course last year as well as my own research, I realized how much people are like plants and fungi, absorbing and transforming sunlight directly through our skin. Out of these thoughts came this image of a woman as a garden bed – and many pencil sketches, including the one below. As the sun grew palpably stronger this week and finally started melting the snow in my valley, I worked on this color sketch, finishing on Friday afternoon. The oil paint is still wet – it might not even be done – but in celebration of the coming Spring Equinox, I want to share it with you. More to come.
In addition to being like plants and fungi, we're also like the soil from which they grow. Our vitality and health spring from the soil we create with our diet, environment, and lifestyle. As chemicals washed down the drain pollute the soil, so too do they affect the terrain of our bodies. As the seeds in a garden grow from both the quality of soil and the energy of the sun, so too do our organs, muscles, bones and blood.
Truly, we are creatures of the sun, nourished and protected by its life-giving rays.
Mr. Turner just might be right. Certainly he succeeded in capturing God's light in his paintings. It took until his last breath to realize he was a creature of that light himself.
In celebration of spring! –