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i have never to this day been able to find any medical study to back this up in any way or any theory so i have no idea where he got his info from

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Sunglasses may further limit the eyes’ access to full sunlight, thereby altering melatonin rhythms. Going shades-free in the daylight, even for just 10–15 minutes, could confer significant health benefits.

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I prefer to use a sun block which included a 'zinc' componate rather than solely chemical ingrediants which I've been told can actually cause skin problems.

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I prefer not to wear sunscreen, but definitely do not want my face to look old

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Call them the Hulk bugs. Just as they do for the comic book hero, gamma rays*seem to make certain microscopic fungi stronger. Researchers have found hints that melanin--the same pigment that's the natural ultraviolet filter in people's skin--might enable these fungi to harness the energy of gamma radiation as well as to shield themselves from it.

Microbiologist Arturo Casadevall of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City recalls learning several years ago that single-cell fungi had been found thriving inside the collapsed nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, Ukraine. He and his colleagues later saw reports that the cooling water in some working nuclear reactors turns black from colonies of melanin-rich fungi.

Nuclear reactors are intense sources of gamma rays, which can zap through living organisms and leave behind trails of destruction. Many microorganisms can survive in extreme environments, but Casadevall thought that something more might he going on. Perhaps the fungi were growing thanks to the radiation, not in spite of it. "The thought was that biology never wastes any energy source," he says.

Casadevall says that fungi such as Cryptococcus neoformans--which causes grave infections in AIDS patients--have layers of melanin on their membranes. Melanin is rich in radicals--molecules with highly reactive unpaired electrons--that may help fend off attacks by the immune system of any organism that the fungus is trying to infect. But Casadevall wondered whether these layers might also turn gamma ray energy into a form the cell could use.

To test this hypothesis, Casadevall's team exposed colonies of C. neoformans to gamma rays 500 times as intense as the normal radiation background on Earth's surface. The colonies grew up to three times as fast as normal. A mutant "albino" form of the fungus, which produced no melanin, grew at a normal pace, the team reports online in PLoS ONE.

But the accelerated growth didn't prove that the fungi drew energy from the radiation, Casadevall says, so the researchers took a closer look at melanin.

In one experiment, they found that gamma rays induced a four-fold increase in melanin's ability to catalyze an oxidation-reduction reaction typical of cell metabolism.

They also tested melanin's response to gamma rays using electron spin resonance, a technique similar to nuclear magnetic resonance*spectroscopy. Gamma rays changed the distribution of unpaired electrons in the molecule, says Casadevall's Albert Einstein colleague Ekaterina Dadachova.

These findings suggest that gamma rays kick some melanin electrons into excited states, initiating a yet-unknown process that would end up producing chemical energy, Casadevall says. This might be similar to the way in which photosynthesis supplies energy to plants, he adds. He speculates that melanin might collect energy not only from gamma rays but also from lower-energy radiation such as X rays or ultraviolet rays. "I think this is only the tip of the iceberg," he says.

The findings are interesting, says Darrell Fisher, a radiation biologist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory*in Richland, Wash. However, he says, "one must be careful not to draw unwarranted conclusions." If radiation enhances the growth of fungi, he says, it's "important to understand and test the underlying mechanisms."

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Pigments serve many visually obvious animal functions (e.g. hair, skin, eyes, feathers, scales). One is 'melanin', unusual in an absorption across the UV-visual spectrum which is controversial. Any polymer or macro-structure of melanin monomers is 'melanin'. Its roles derive from complex structural and physical-chemical properties e.g. semiconductor, stable radical, conductor, free radical scavenger, charge-transfer. Clinicians and researchers are well acquainted with melanin in skin and ocular pathologies and now increasingly are with internal, melanized, pathology-associated sites not obviously subject to light radiation (e.g. brain, cochlea). At both types of sites some findings puzzle: positive and negative neuromelanin effects in Parkinsons; unexpected melanocyte action in the cochlea, in deafness; melanin reduces DNA damage, but can promote melanoma; in melanotic cells, mitochondrial number was 83% less, respiration down 30%, but development similar to normal amelanotic cells. A little known, avian anatomical conundrum may help resolve melanin paradoxes. One of many unique adaptations to flight, the pecten, strange intra-ocular organ with unresolved function(s), is much enlarged and heavily melanized in birds fighting gravity, hypoxia, thirst and hunger during long-distance, frequently sub-zero, non-stop migration. The pecten may help cope with energy and nutrient needs under extreme conditions, by a marginal but critical, melanin-initiated conversion of light to metabolic energy, coupled to local metabolite recycling. Similarly in Central Africa, reduction in body hair and melanin increase may also have lead to 'photomelanometabolism' which, though small scale/ unit body area, in total may have enabled a sharply increased development of the energy-hungry cortex and enhanced human survival generally. Animal inability to utilize light energy directly has been traditionally assumed. Melanin and the pecten may have unexpected lessons also for human physiology and medicine.

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its probably a really understood underresearched area