HEALTHY

Physical Health

 From ¹Netscape News: "New research published in the British Medical Journal concludes that people who don't get enough sun, especially when they are children and teenagers, run a significantly higher risk of getting multiple sclerosis as adults. Conversely, those who get lots of sun as kids seem to be better protected from the disease, according a study conducted by Dr. Terry Dwyer of the University of Tasmania." . . . "High sun exposure from the ages of 6 to 15--when the immune system is still developing--provided a 70 percent drop in the multiple sclerosis risk. Exposure to winter sun offered more protection than summer sun. Those who had the greatest skin damage as a result of that sun exposure also had the greatest reduction in risk of acquiring multiple sclerosis."

Being naked has its dangers, to be sure, and its disadvantages. The problem with writing about them is that we cannot say for certain what they are. There are claims and counter-claims of how our bodies would respond to our modern civilizations if we went about constantly nude. Nobody knows it all for sure because we have nothing to go by except what happens to bodies that have always been constantly clothed, and have never had the benefit or drawbacks of having never worn clothes. We do know some things, though, from a composite of naturist experiences.

Our bodies were designed to be bare. Our bodies were also designed with brains hooked to sensors that once upon a time told us when to find covering to ward off excess cold, and shade to protect our bare skin from excess heat. On one hand, we have recent reports that state most of the melanomas (skin cancers) occur on parts of the body that, in our cultures, remain constantly covered so that harsh sunlight reaches surfaces not properly prepared for it.

On the other hand, quite a few of them occur on the face and ears, areas that are seldom covered. I would bet most of those occur on men because their constant shaving removes natural covering that is supposed to be there, and on short-haired women.

Another thing to consider is that we are animals of the woods and water, with skin designed to accommodate the circumstances most prevalent there. Our ancestors were dwellers in caves, the most likely place for the hairy ones among us to lose the race for prevalence, and for humans to gain their most notable (lack of a) feature. Very hairy people were most likely banished, the lack of hair on these early people being the quickest identifier of anyone actually human (and we still, in many ways, practice that). Talk about your prejudice!

We still live in caves, of a manufactured variety. We drive them back and forth between the caves in which we live, and those in which we shop, get educated, go to work, or just plain visit. People who don't have their own cave are called "homeless" and so have a much lowered status amongst us.

Our modern caves may be a great deal drier than the natural caves of our forebears, but they still suffer many of their problems and we carry them about in the rags by which we swaddle ourselves. We clean and disinfect them with all kinds of chemicals (a portion of which we wear and absorb through our skin), and then put them away in drawers and closets to keep them safe.

Inside those drawers and closets, some of them hang for entire seasons, or lay folded into stacks and clumps of cloth. Mold finds its way into the folds and creases, as do spiders and mites. Poison ivy through which you may have walked will leave its base substances where you can be reinfected months later—unless you're knowledgeable enough to cancel its alkalinity by habitually adding a cup of white vinegar to your rinse cycle. Our own bodies pour out a chemical-factory's worth of contaminants the cloth absorbs. We wear that with the cloth while we parade about all day in our finery, and then struggle to find the most efficient ways to remove it in the wash. Those of us who don't change all that often, well, the rest of us get to know who you are.

Reports abound about the health hazards posed by clothing, everything from jellyfish getting trapped inside of bathing suits to swimming trunks causing yeast infections. I have also learned, while researching for this message, that a cloth barrier is no prevention for getting sand inside a vagina but, in fact, may help trap it there and exacerbate the discomfort. A simple towel, on the other hand, is common at a nudist resort, to be used as a cover on benches to keep potential diseases from spreading (and it folds a wallet and keys into a convenient pocket to replace the one Nature forgot to build into your body).

Mental Health

To be known as a nudist is to be known by most textiles as a nut, or worse: We get to be called fruitcakes, sex fiends, swingers, pornographers, perverts, and more. We get to look back at those who would call us those names, and (usually silently) wish they could have the experience to know what they were talking about. What is there about simple nudity that makes it such a big deal?

Actually, nothing. It's not like being naked is something a person does. You hear people say they dressed or undressed, but you never hear anybody telling about nuding themselves, or nakeding themselves. Nude and naked are things we get, or be, but never do. Nobody ever spent all day nuding. They started the day naked so they could be nude.

There's more: What do you call the fear of clothing? There must be a name for it, we are born with it. Maybe it's not a phobia, but a natural fear that we are forced to overcome while we are still too small and immature to effectively resist.

There are names for fear of nakedness, though. You know what a gymnasium is?—it's a place to go and be naked while you exercise. Is gymnophobia a fear of gymnasiums?—a fear of exercise?— a fear of sports equipment? NO! The word gymnasium comes from a Latin word that means to exercise naked.

Gymnophobia: fear of nudity.

Dishabiliophobia: fear of undressing in front of someone.

Ithyphallophobia: fear of seeing, thinking about or having an erect penis.

Kolpophobia: fear of genitals, particularly female.

Nudophobia: fear of nudity.

Ophthalmophobia: fear of being stared at.

Scopophobia or Scoptophobia: fear of being seen or stared at.

And, we could contrive our own by combining two of the other phobias, as in Gymnoscopophobia: which would mean the fear of being seen or stared at while naked.

There are plenty of others in that long list of phobias from which I retrieved those at http://www.phobialist.com/ and http://tesarta.com, many of which had relevancy to social nudity (fear of beautiful women, fear of female genitalia, fear of teenagers, water, rain, the sun, the outdoors . . .) but none I could even misconstrue to be about fear of clothing. It gives the impression that nakedness is a big deal amongst humans because too many of us find it to be scary. It is sad to know how much of that big deal is entirely artificial, and how erroneous are the impressions people have about nudism as a practice which come from nothing more than their own worries, imaginations, and tall tales told about places nobody you know personally has ever been and events they never went to experience for themselves.

All of the phobias people suffer about their own nakedness and that of others contributes to what has to be an actual mental disease that most deeply affects those who have been placed in charge of running our country. People engaging in the practices of social nudity tell about the freedom from stress in their lives; people who have never practiced it worry about orgies and pedophiles. People swimming at the naked portion of the beach tell how they hate to get dressed to go home; people swimming at the textile part cannot wait to get out of their soggy bathing suits and into some dry clothing, after which they will rush to turn on the AC before they begin to fill their dry clothes full of sweat.

Compulsiveness can take form as opposites. Most of us are compulsive about the wearing of clothing, and would not be seen naked no matter what. We would rush into a burning house, if rescued naked, to retrieve clothing and cover ourselves. While that is common, the opposite is not. Very seldom will you meet a human being who refuses to wear clothing no matter what. You may meet a few who adamantly hate clothing, but will grudgingly don enough to keep themselves warm, to shed away the sparks made by their arc welder, or to satisfy a need to keep their neighbors from complaining to the police.

We must, however, recognize that if a compulsiveness to refuse to cover one's body is a mental sickness, it has to also be true of the opposite. Either both are true, or neither.

I once heard insanity defined as acting in ways that pose a danger or threat to oneself or others, and I think that is basically what that word means. If so, then look at the two descriptions—or ALL descriptions of the actions, conditions, beliefs and so forth of naturists versus textile-compulsives, and decide for yourself what the results of their lifestyles (if freely practiced without restrictions) would ultimately be.

Then, when your investigation is complete and you have personally checked out the facts and verified the results first-hand, tell me who you still think is the group that is crazy.

Foot Notes:________________________________

1: News Link  to read the entire article.