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Maybe it is just going outside and being active that's the benefit, and the "sun" part is just a correlation. People that spend a lot of time in the sun aren't
by gilbetron 8y ago
Maybe it is just going outside and being active that's the benefit, and the "sun" part is just a correlation. People that spend a lot of time in the sun aren't just sitting in front of a computer while doing so, they are moving more. How about research that shows people with the same amount of outside time doing the same types of things, but one group wears sun block, the other doesn't?
- classichasclass 8y agoI think this is worth looking into. There may be some direct benefit from sun exposure, but it's very difficult to extricate it from other benefits of good regular outdoor activity. In public health there's been an interest in looking at park access for kids to improve activity and overall wellbeing, and I wonder if a similar effect is being observed here.
- njarboe 8y agoI think that these hard to prove health factors vary a lot depending on a persons genetics, diet, and lifestyle. Big studies with small statistical results using an average of outcomes is not going to be very useful for you, a single individual. 100% of people who don't eat Vitamin C get scurvy. This is useful information for an individual person. A study of 20,000 people over 20 years that finds that people with a vitamin D level below a certain number died on average 100 day earlier than the ones with vitamin D above that level is useless to an individual. Maybe with individual genetic testing some more useful things can be learned about health for individual people, but for now the low hanging fruit of health studies has been picked. Instead more focus on how individual people can figure out what works for them should be done.