A Response to “Activated Charcoal for Sunburns”

A Reader’s Insight

Alex writes in to debate a recent testimony on using activated charcoal for sunburns.

I love activated charcoal, but this story should be deleted immediately.
With what mechanism is activated charcoal helping with a sunburn? AC adsorbs chemicals, it does not “suck heat” out of anything… The human body responds to too much sun by sending immune cells to repair DNA damage. There’s nothing there on your skin that you would want AC to adsorb anyways (no chemicals, no bacteria etc), just let the human body repair itself. Moisturize if you’d like…

Charcoal House’s Response

Hello Alex,

Thank you for your response to the post on Activated Charcoal for Sunburns. As with other testimonies we receive from different people and places, I often respond like you – “How can charcoal help with …” But how do you argue with someone’s personal experience?

With What Mechanism Does AC help with Sunburn

You ask, “With what mechanism is activated charcoal [AC] helping with sunburn?” Good question. Can’t say I fully understand, but neither do I understand fully how AC can scrub “dirty” sound in studio microphones and high-tech sound systems, but it does.

How does Activated Charcoal “capture” radiation, microwave, and far infrared, all of which can severely burn the skin. I can’t explain it, but it does. How does Activated Charcoal diffuse EMF? Not sure, but it works.

Why does the German Army have a protocol for second-degree burns that employs Activated Carbon Cloth? Because it works.

Please check out this link for stories of other burn victims from X-ray, gasoline, boiling water, and how activated charcoal brought them almost instant relief.

If activated charcoal can help to relieve pain and promote healing for a range of burns caused from different agents, then I assume there is a good chance it will help with sun burn as well. Remember, sunlight is a broad spectrum of various wavelengths, many of which are well known to cause burns. Science has long known that activated charcoal is mysteriously able to neutralize or “capture” some of these harmful light waves. How? It is not fully understood, however, that is not surprising. Nature is an endless storehouse of mysteries that modern science wrestles with every day.

Activated Charcoal Adsorbs Chemicals not Heat…

Oh, by the way, Activated Charcoal does have a “bleaching” effect on skin. If activated charcoal can “pull out” color [including melatonin] from the skin, and if charcoal poultices can draw out urine odor from the kidneys, then is it possible it can ‘pull out’ (technical term is ‘adsorb) the ‘bio-chemicals’ that are triggering the heat and pain sensations? I would assume so.

Another interesting feature of the sensations of heat and pain is that they both travel along the same nerve pathways. That is why heat applications will often override the sensation of pain and bring instant relief [at least in the short term]. Activated Charcoal is well known to relieve pain to a lesser or greater degree. Again, it is not a stretch to assume charcoal might also relieve the sensation of heat either directly or indirectly.

Let the Human Body Repair Itself

How does charcoal help with sunburn? To partially answer the question, how does Aloe Vera help with all sorts of burns including sunburn? Providing moisture for sure, but obviously much more than just moisture. Aloe Vera is a simple natural remedy, like activated charcoal, rich in history dating back thousands of years. Alexander The Great, valued Aloe Vera more than any other remedy, devoting wagons to nothing but the transporting of Aloe Vera plants on his far flung military campaigns.

As many know, Aloe Vera has medicinal qualities apart from providing moisture. Likewise, Charcoal salves and creams also have medicinal qualities besides providing moisture, some of which are quite bazaar and still a mystery to science.

Science does know that harmful sun-rays do burn the skin resulting in inflammation of the skin and the dermal layers below. Science also knows that inflammation whether of the skin [dermatitis*], of the brain [encephalitis*], or the tonsils [tonsillitis*] are all chemically triggered by some foreign agent, or the body’s own bio-agents [including cytokines]. Activated Charcoal is well known to adsorb many of these triggers, allowing the body to, as you perfectly conclude, “repair itself”.

After years and years of working with charcoal and listening to others’ personal experiences, I personally believe charcoal does not “cure” anything. What activated charcoal does, so amazingly well, is to remove toxins, allowing the body to dedicate its resources to repair/cure/heal itself, just as the Creator designed it to.

-John Dinsley, 06/2020

Disclosure

* ‘itis’ coming at the end of a word, indicates an inflammation of some organ of the body. It can be stated as a general rule that all inflammation is triggered by a toxin, most commonly produced by a foreign microbe such as bacteria, virus, or fungus [ie. exotoxin, endotoxin] or resulting from the over-reaction of some body mechanism [ie. the cytokine storm stemming from the over production by immune cells]