The article they cite claims that people who were less exposed to sun had higher disease risk [1]. As far as I saw, the cited article does not include sunscreen

The article they cite claims that people who were less exposed to sun had higher disease risk [1]. As far as I saw, the cited article does not include sunscreen use in the analysis. So it might very well be that sun exposure while wearing sunscreen might have the same benefit, minus the increased skin cancer risk and accelerated skin aging. EDIT: Besides that, there is very likely a huge confounding effect that was probably not properly corrected for. The persons in the "high sun exposure" group were much healthier than in the "avoiding sun exposure" group right from the start (Table 1)! [1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/joim.12496 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/joim.12496