We've all heard that we need a certain amount of sunlight on our bare skin to produce vitamin D. There are many health benefits to solar-generated vitamin D.
But there's another benefit to nudity that I didn't know much about until recently. Perhaps many of you have already heard of it. I'm sure that all of us knew it intuitively: In a couple of words: cutaneous respiration (absorbing oxygen and expelling CO2 through your skin).
I read one anecdote that we can absorb eight percent of the oxygen we need through our skin.
So I did some searching and found that there is a measurable benefit to exposing your skin to the air. One very old study found that we exchange well over 100 cubic centimeters of CO2 and O2 per square meter of skin surface at 27 degrees Celsius.
This begs the question: can't I just breathe to give my skin the oxygen it needs? I know of no evidence that your lungs will compensate and deliver that last eight percent of the oxygen your body needs.
I have heard of studies in which people paint their skin or use liquid latex with the effect of completely blocking the direct air flow to their skin. I have heard that this is a very dangerous thing to do.
I am even more interested in the extent to which clothing deprives our bodies of oxygen. Likely not to the degree that paint or latex would do, but surely interfering with oxygen flow to some parts of our bodies.
Because of winter's chill and to accommodate people who might object to nudity at any time of year, I must cover some portion of my skin during much of the day, but when I can, I remove all clothing. Now I have one more reason to do so: to let my skin breathe slightly better!!
Way back when the crust of the earth was cooling, I was a Florida trooper (thus bearone). I was assigned to work with the movie production company that filmed the Bond movie where the girl was painted with gold paint. Stripped nude and painted all over. She died. The lungs will not make up the total amount of O2 needed. Your body will even absorb O2 from the water when diving. There was a report recently that an amount of sunshine is good to prevent skin cancer. One of the after effects of a recent illness is a great increase in miss spelled words. I have an issue with spelling errors. Maybe I'm learning something in this.
Bearone
There was a historical rendition of this where a boy had died from the same thing when he was painted nude for a public dinner party that was given, I think, by King Henry VIII.
I saw an episode of Myth Busters where they "busted" the myth that covering your body with paint will kill you or cause you undo suffering.
What they did not test was gold paint made with oil and maybe lead based as well. Like you said, "Way back when the crust of the earth was cooling" implies probably back when lead paint was not yet known (or just ignored) to be a poisoning agent, at least enough to be concerned with.
Gold paint is not easy to make using latex. Fake gold paint does not look gold at all, it looks more "yellow ocher" than gold. It takes a good oil based paint to make 'gold' the way we like to see it.
Re: Here is at least one dispute to the "paint and you die" thought
November 14 2007, 11:13 AM
I remember in seventh grade hearing about the movie, "Goldfinger," and the guys in class talking about how the actress who was painted gold actually died because her skin couldn't breath. Looking back its probably another case of game Telephone where a gropup of people pass a message along from one to another to see how convoluted the message can become in the end. I'm guessing that people saw the movie and how the character dies and it started taking on a life of its own eventually evolving into the the real actress died because of the paint.
You are the paint expert. I think you may be right about the oil base. It would be more effective in blocking the air from the skin. I don't remember the title of that movie but it was a Sean Connery 007 around 60, 61, or 62. It was glittery gold.
Bearone
I was in seventh grade at the time and my parents thought it was a little too adult for me to see. However, I did eventually get to go to the theater and wrote my own play for my class which we perfomed in the school auditorium entitled, "Boldfinger." I must have been a liberal thinker at the time because I cast a girl in the title role.
I never saw the movie, not much of a movie fan. Good choice for duty, send the guy who rarely goes to a movie. Thanks for clearing all that up now I won't feel intimidated about painting myself gold. Well maybe silver....purple....hmm.
We don't see that many movies, either, but some just stick out in my mind like "Goldfinger" and the line I used above, "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die." Gert Fröbe played Golfinger and that line was used when he was going to kill Bond with a laser beam whom he had tied to a metal table and the beam was headed right for Bond's groin. The technology was one of the few things that date the movie because lasers were very new and just becoming known to the public and the only thing that was really known about them was that they cold cut through steel and very destructive. No one could have imagined delicate eye surgery or compact disks.
That scene was another way Mike Meyers parodied the spy movies of the 60's in "Austin Powers." Where a villan would try to kill a good guy sectret agent with a slow method and then leave the room, so a female who had fallen in love with the secret agent could free him. You always wondered, and it was again parodied in "Austion Powers," why the villan didn't just shoot the sectret agent and get it over with quickly? Why go through the drama of a laser beam or a floor slowly opening that would drop you in a shark tank or whatever? Of course, them you'd have no cliffhanger in the movie, that's why...
I used to go to saturday movies when I was a kid. Cowboys and Indians. It was traumatic to say the least. We were in the cattle business and I was a "cowboy" but my Dad was a cherokee indian so I never knew who to cheer for. For the most part I have never been able to be still for long. Movies seem to be eternity.
Oh yes, now I remember. I have been stating thet very same thing for years from what I discovered from how my skin reacts to it's environment. For the sake of those that don't know, and those that don't remember, I have psoriasis. But not just the more common form of psoriasis that 1% of the population has, but an extreamely rare form. The doctor gave me a prescription of nude sunbathing, but by paying attention to how my skin reacts to what I noticed that the kind of clothing that I wear, and if I wore any at all had a greater possitive effect on my skin health than nude sunbathing alone. Medically speaking, I'm concidered to have a disorder, disease, or condition, a characterization that I totally reject. How is it just because a person has skin that reacts more intune with it's environment, he's said to be diseased? If anything, I'm one of the least diseased people to walk this earth (as long as I let my skin breethe for several hours on a daily basis)
I was very interested to read that nudity seems to keep your psoriasis under control as I have found the same with eczema. I really need to go around nude, as I find that if I have to stay dressed for a few days, I start to feel itchy and I get little red spots, which are the first signs of yeast activity. I am very aware that a couple of winters ago I remained dressed against my better judgement and ended up with a major flare-up and I still have the scars to show for it: before that I wasn't really aware that I had eczema, but knew that the spots went if I went around nude. If we go away, I try to spend an hour or so nude in the hotel room to stop the yeast getting a hold. At this time of year I feel I am on a knife-edge as I cannot get the benefit of sun on my body and whilst the house is normally warm enough to go around nude, there are occasions when it is so windy that draughts prevent me doing so. Once eczema starts to take hold, clothing acts as an abrasive and exacerbates the condition. Fortunately most of my family and friends accept me going around nude, but if everybody did so, my eczema would be just a very minor inconvenience. My dermatologist prescribed steroids, but they made my skin worse than ever. Nowadays, I find that if I dollop on zinc and castor oil cream it is sufficient, but clothing is not an option as it will be ruined.
I certainly don't want to perpetuate any myths about painting your body.
I simply want to repeat the fact that humans do some of their breathing through their skin. Like you, I do my best skin breathing without clothes!
I guess that I don't understand how our body can absorb oxygen through our skin. Nice thought to nudists, but let's not start spreading false information.
