I spent 7 days under the Turkish sun at the beach.

Have you ever been to Turkey? Then you know that sun.

So what did you take with you, Ezgi? How did you protect yourself?

Did you sunbathe?

Hold on.

My sun protection is "adaptation."

Sun is not something you survive; sun is something you adapt to. If you can't adapt, you get pigmentation, inflammation, the burn, in the extreme case, skin cancer.

Is the sun bad? Nope. Change the question: Am I ready?

Do you have a choice not to be ready? Not really. You can choose to stay unready, and that means living like an alien, shielding yourself 24/7.

But that same sun is also needed to run trillions of processes in your body. Making your own vitamin D is one. My favourite is EZ Water.

What's that, Ezgi?

Inside every one of us is the potential for a liquid crystalline phase of water called EZ water, discovered by scientist and PhD professor Gerald Pollack. When sunlight passes through your skin the healthy way, it charges the water inside you, turning it into a living, gel-like crystal. Pollack's research shows this alkaline, liquid-crystalline water behaves like a gel inside our cells.

If you adapt, your body is full of EZ Water.

Cellular energy.

More vitality.

A brighter mood.

More enthusiasm for life.

And what happens to someone who's full of energy instead?

That person makes beautiful choices.

Follows their dreams.

Is kind.

Sees beauty in the world and in others.

Doesn't depend on supplements or hours of therapy.

Generates life force energy from within herself.

That's one reason so many people feel more alive in the summer.

If you adapt like I do, you can enjoy 7 days at the beach and come home with no damage. All I did all year round, winter, summer, autumn, every single day, was return to homeostasis with the Flow Ritual. At the beach, I just kept it going.

Seven days at the beach, and I came home with no pigmentation, no redness, no burning.

But the work didn't begin at the beach. For years, every morning and every night, I've supported my skin's balance, without acids, retinols, or routines that strip its natural sebum.

And being prepared didn't mean being reckless. I stayed under a large umbrella. I swam, came back to the shade, and used the zinc version of the Sun Elixir on my face and body, like holding another umbrella, not instead of the shade.

I didn't sunbathe.

I've lived in the UK for nineteen years. I'm a tree planted in this soil, this light, this weather. My body knows this environment. So flying to Turkey for a week and lying down in that sun? Even with sunscreen, I wouldn't do it.

Think about what that actually is: taking a tree that's been planted in the UK for years, dropping it onto a hot parking lot in Turkey, and asking it to survive by pouring chemicals on top of it. That's pure stress on the body.

The sun is powerful, yes. But you're a tree, used to your own light, your own soil, your own weather. So why would you fly somewhere hot and intense, lie down in it, and shock your body like that?

Ask yourself honestly: is it a beauty standard? Do you want to look bronze badly enough to cause biological stress and force melanin production just to change your colour? Think about how absurd that is.

Sunbathing itself is wrong, wherever you do it. Going from a cool country to a hot one isn't "a nice change of scenery" to your body. It's changing the pot. You know what happens when you move a plant to another corner of your own house, same home, and it still wilts, yellows, dies back. There's no difference between you and that plant. Your body is made of the same elements of the earth.

Don't sunbathe. Don't do it, even with protection. The protection doesn't make it make sense.

Every evening, I helped my skin recover: raw jojoba on damp skin, all over my body. Rose Mist for the microbiome, all over my body. Face Elixir on my face. Sun Elixir on my face and body. Then I repeated it the next morning.

Your skin's relationship with the sun isn't decided by one product at the beach. It's shaped by how you support it all year, how sensibly you behave during exposure, and how you care for it after.

You can see it in the reel I shared: a light, beautiful tan I didn't even try for. No burn. No pain. Nothing happened. Not luck. Readiness.

 

Sun is not something you protect yourself from. Sun is something you adapt yourself to. If you're out there looking for the best sunscreen to protect yourself from the sun, that already tells you something: you're not ready.

That's the tree planted in the UK, flown to Turkey, Spain, Italy, lying bare-skinned under that sun with sunscreen as the only thing between you and it. That's sunbathing, and that's when people get pigmentation, inflammation, burns, pain.

If your skin is out of balance and you're going to bare it like that, yes, you need SPF, broad-spectrum, all of it. But understand: sunscreen doesn't save you from the damage of that intense energy. It may stop you feeling the pain; underneath, you're still burning.

So the goal was never the sunscreen. The goal is to adapt. Seek shade. The zinc version is another umbrella, not a replacement for one.

If your skin already has pigmentation, inflammation or reactivity, give it time. Stay out of intense sun and keep using proper broad-spectrum SPF.

Maybe your skin isn't ready this summer. Give it the time and consistency it needs.

Always return to balance.