5 ms·

Putting together all the messaging I've gotten recently: Regular sunscreen is bad, zinc oxide sunscreen is bad, getting sun is bad, not getting sun is bad (Vita

by drcode 5y ago

Putting together all the messaging I've gotten recently: Regular sunscreen is bad, zinc oxide sunscreen is bad, getting sun is bad, not getting sun is bad (Vitamin D).

TheCowboy 5y ago
I realize you're being a bit humorous, but it's true 'the messaging' on this can be muddled. "getting sun is bad" should be strictly "too much UV exposure over a long period of time is bad" which is currently unambiguously what the evidence demonstrates. I have also started to avoid sunscreens and wear synthetic fabrics instead which aggressively filter out UV light, or I schedule fewer outdoors-in-direct-sun activities during peak UV hours when I have that option.
- 71a54xd 5y ago
  Burning your skin is also really bad though, any amount of UV will also reduce the ability of your skin to properly regenerate and heal for a few days.
- markenqualitaet 5y ago
  There is no threshold for harm*. It's a cost:benefit consideration. From a cancer/aging perspective, any amount of UV exposure is bad. Tanning is a consequence of DNA damage. If your skin gets darker from sun exposure, you see evidence of your skin cells reacting to increased DNA repair signals. Malignant transformation/senescence is a stochastic event of course, but age markers pretty much suffer in a dose dependent manner. * Of course exhausting antioxidant capacity will greatly increase damage at a certain point. I am not exactly sure if UV light can cause single strand breakage by itself, or via ROS, but antioxidants are no "shield" in any case - more like a minefield.
  - teslabox 5y ago
    The antidote for damage from UV light is the pro-metabolic effects of red light. Red light hits the red metal (copper) in the Cytochrome C Oxidase enzyme [0] in our mitochondria and refreshes this enzyme. When the cells have enough energy (ATP) they can repair the damage from UV light. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytochrome_c_oxidase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytochrome_c_oxidase (no mention of red light therapy in this article). UV light from the sun comes with plenty of red light. UV light from the tanning bed does not have any red light. In the winter I used to go tanning, then would spend 12 minutes in the bright-light room [1]. [1] at Planet Fitness. The company website doesn't have any information, but I found this page: https://thelifevirtue.com/total-body-enhancement-pros-and-cons/ https://thelifevirtue.com/total-body-enhancement-pros-and-co...
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      This explains the therapeutic benefits of red light on retinal tissue.
    - jml7c5 5y ago
      I was curious so performed a brief search. What are your thoughts on this study, which suggests that cytochrome c oxidase is not involved in the effect?: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jphotobiol.2019.03.015 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jphotobiol.2019.03.015
      - teslabox 5y ago
        I think your link is interesting, in that the group without the copper enzyme also benefited from red light exposure. The copper enzyme explanation seemed reasonable to me, but perhaps there’s better explanation for why people seem to benefit from red light exposure. Maybe the benefit from red light it multifaceted.
pibechorro 5y ago
Getting sun is awesome. Just be reasonable and dont over expose yourself, especially mid day sun. The key is moderate, daily exposure of skin without lotions on it blocking it. Your skin will adapt as the seasons change, you will have stronger immune systems, better mood, etc. Being pale and then going for 4 hours at noon to the beach is trouble, build up to it or wear clothing to shade you. If you are naturally pasty and live in the tropics.. mmm . You are in trouble.
- mrfusion 5y ago
  I believe mid day sun is the best for producing vitamin d though.
  - ripply 5y ago
    Correct, the atmosphere will block the rays that cause vitamin d production so the best time to be exposed is around noon +/- a few hours when the sun is above you
- wpearse 5y ago
  Australasia has it particularly bad. I have fair skin — 20 min in the sun on a boat with no sunscreen a few summers ago and I had a series of doctors visits over the next week to treat the, quite literally, blistering sunburn.
CountDrewku 5y ago
Someone told me that I will die of something. Crazy talk.
reedf1 5y ago
You can't outsmart entropy!
- xyzzy21 5y ago
  Indeed. You started dying the moment you were born!
jareklupinski 5y ago
sounds like "eggs" and "good vs bad cholesterol" all over again
- kadoban 5y ago
  Not really, it's more just that there's no perfect, general, choice, a lot of unknowns and a decent amount of nuance about what _is_ known.
  - Tagbert 5y ago
    Also with eggs and cholesterol
    - kadoban 5y ago
      With eggs it's pretty much: eat them if you like eggs :shrug: With the Sun... you're already exposing yourself to a giant irradiating ball of fire, but also our bodies are evolved to require some exposure to produce vitD. How much exposure should you get? Nobody really knows. Should you wear sunscreen, or just moderate exposure? Which sunscreen? What good choices are there? It's all a mess.
junon 5y ago
This is how I feel a lot of health "news" works. I'm pretty hesitant to start eating "better" because everyone, even so-called experts in the field, seem to have not just differing, but oftentimes polar opposite opinions or guidance about things. It is so insanely hard to filter the truth from the lies when it comes to this stuff.
- 28804764 5y ago
  I don't think there's any real debate that eating whole, unprocessed foods, mostly plants, is the best thing you can do for your diet.
  - junon 5y ago
    What are your qualifications? Of course there is. There are people that think eating only red meat is the best diet. I also don't believe that eating "mostly plants" is the best way of eating healthy.
  - hansvm 5y ago
    That's a good enough default stance, but reality is more complicated. I'll list a couple of points, and in general there are many scenarios where more heavily processed foods are advantageous, and to a lesser degree I think some people would benefit from a high percentage of calories coming from meat and fish. - Most plants are a little dangerous to consume raw in significant quantities, especially over any extended period of time, especially if you're one of the 15% of the US with kidney issues, especially if you're one of the 1% of the US with IBD, etc. If your diet is mostly plants, the processing you do should at a minimum include cooking most of them for a few minutes. Some vitamins will be destroyed, but that's a preferable outcome. - If you have any kind of nutrient deficiency (e.g., calcium is a common issue) and want to solve the issue with your diet, you'll typically want to choose foods that have been processed to be easier to digest and/or to be fortified with such a nutrient. For calcium in particular a diet consisting mostly of unprocessed plants is insufficient. - Some foods (tomatoes are a classic example) have higher nutritional value when bought cooked and canned than when bought "fresh" because the canned product was produced with much fresher ingredients. - The majority of the US lives paycheck to paycheck. There's an economic argument to be made that heavily processed foods can be preferable to the alternatives if they allow you to get your vegetables and other nutrition more cheaply (both in direct cost savings and also in the ability to buy in bulk without spoilage). - Not everyone has the same health goals or personal chemistry, and a linearizable ordering doesn't exist for many diet choices that would apply to every individual across time. For a few choice examples, (1) roughly 1% of the population are underweight and benefit from diet choices enabling weight gain (i.e., on average probably not the proposed diet), and (2) a mostly different 1% subset with IBD benefits from the immunosuppressive effects of low to moderate alcohol consumption even despite its other negative effects (that point is still being studied/debated -- alcohol affects some individuals in that group more negatively than others, talk to your doctor).
antisthenes 5y ago
If you preface each of your statements with "too much", then suddenly all 4 can make sense and be useful.

by drcode 5y ago

Putting together all the messaging I've gotten recently: Regular sunscreen is bad, zinc oxide sunscreen is bad, getting sun is bad, not getting sun is bad (Vitamin D).

TheCowboy 5y ago

I realize you're being a bit humorous, but it's true 'the messaging' on this can be muddled. "getting sun is bad" should be strictly "too much UV exposure over a long period of time is bad" which is currently unambiguously what the evidence demonstrates. I have also started to avoid sunscreens and wear synthetic fabrics instead which aggressively filter out UV light, or I schedule fewer outdoors-in-direct-sun activities during peak UV hours when I have that option.

71a54xd 5y ago
Burning your skin is also really bad though, any amount of UV will also reduce the ability of your skin to properly regenerate and heal for a few days.
markenqualitaet 5y ago
There is no threshold for harm*. It's a cost:benefit consideration. From a cancer/aging perspective, any amount of UV exposure is bad. Tanning is a consequence of DNA damage. If your skin gets darker from sun exposure, you see evidence of your skin cells reacting to increased DNA repair signals. Malignant transformation/senescence is a stochastic event of course, but age markers pretty much suffer in a dose dependent manner. * Of course exhausting antioxidant capacity will greatly increase damage at a certain point. I am not exactly sure if UV light can cause single strand breakage by itself, or via ROS, but antioxidants are no "shield" in any case - more like a minefield.
- teslabox 5y ago
  The antidote for damage from UV light is the pro-metabolic effects of red light. Red light hits the red metal (copper) in the Cytochrome C Oxidase enzyme [0] in our mitochondria and refreshes this enzyme. When the cells have enough energy (ATP) they can repair the damage from UV light. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytochrome_c_oxidase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytochrome_c_oxidase (no mention of red light therapy in this article). UV light from the sun comes with plenty of red light. UV light from the tanning bed does not have any red light. In the winter I used to go tanning, then would spend 12 minutes in the bright-light room [1]. [1] at Planet Fitness. The company website doesn't have any information, but I found this page: https://thelifevirtue.com/total-body-enhancement-pros-and-cons/ https://thelifevirtue.com/total-body-enhancement-pros-and-co...
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    This explains the therapeutic benefits of red light on retinal tissue.
  - jml7c5 5y ago
    I was curious so performed a brief search. What are your thoughts on this study, which suggests that cytochrome c oxidase is not involved in the effect?: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jphotobiol.2019.03.015 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jphotobiol.2019.03.015
    - teslabox 5y ago
      I think your link is interesting, in that the group without the copper enzyme also benefited from red light exposure. The copper enzyme explanation seemed reasonable to me, but perhaps there’s better explanation for why people seem to benefit from red light exposure. Maybe the benefit from red light it multifaceted.

pibechorro 5y ago

Getting sun is awesome. Just be reasonable and dont over expose yourself, especially mid day sun. The key is moderate, daily exposure of skin without lotions on it blocking it. Your skin will adapt as the seasons change, you will have stronger immune systems, better mood, etc. Being pale and then going for 4 hours at noon to the beach is trouble, build up to it or wear clothing to shade you. If you are naturally pasty and live in the tropics.. mmm . You are in trouble.

mrfusion 5y ago
I believe mid day sun is the best for producing vitamin d though.
- ripply 5y ago
  Correct, the atmosphere will block the rays that cause vitamin d production so the best time to be exposed is around noon +/- a few hours when the sun is above you
wpearse 5y ago
Australasia has it particularly bad. I have fair skin — 20 min in the sun on a boat with no sunscreen a few summers ago and I had a series of doctors visits over the next week to treat the, quite literally, blistering sunburn.

CountDrewku 5y ago

Someone told me that I will die of something. Crazy talk.

reedf1 5y ago

You can't outsmart entropy!

xyzzy21 5y ago
Indeed. You started dying the moment you were born!

jareklupinski 5y ago

sounds like "eggs" and "good vs bad cholesterol" all over again

kadoban 5y ago
Not really, it's more just that there's no perfect, general, choice, a lot of unknowns and a decent amount of nuance about what _is_ known.
- Tagbert 5y ago
  Also with eggs and cholesterol
  - kadoban 5y ago
    With eggs it's pretty much: eat them if you like eggs :shrug: With the Sun... you're already exposing yourself to a giant irradiating ball of fire, but also our bodies are evolved to require some exposure to produce vitD. How much exposure should you get? Nobody really knows. Should you wear sunscreen, or just moderate exposure? Which sunscreen? What good choices are there? It's all a mess.

junon 5y ago

This is how I feel a lot of health "news" works. I'm pretty hesitant to start eating "better" because everyone, even so-called experts in the field, seem to have not just differing, but oftentimes polar opposite opinions or guidance about things. It is so insanely hard to filter the truth from the lies when it comes to this stuff.

28804764 5y ago
I don't think there's any real debate that eating whole, unprocessed foods, mostly plants, is the best thing you can do for your diet.
- junon 5y ago
  What are your qualifications? Of course there is. There are people that think eating only red meat is the best diet. I also don't believe that eating "mostly plants" is the best way of eating healthy.
- hansvm 5y ago
  That's a good enough default stance, but reality is more complicated. I'll list a couple of points, and in general there are many scenarios where more heavily processed foods are advantageous, and to a lesser degree I think some people would benefit from a high percentage of calories coming from meat and fish. - Most plants are a little dangerous to consume raw in significant quantities, especially over any extended period of time, especially if you're one of the 15% of the US with kidney issues, especially if you're one of the 1% of the US with IBD, etc. If your diet is mostly plants, the processing you do should at a minimum include cooking most of them for a few minutes. Some vitamins will be destroyed, but that's a preferable outcome. - If you have any kind of nutrient deficiency (e.g., calcium is a common issue) and want to solve the issue with your diet, you'll typically want to choose foods that have been processed to be easier to digest and/or to be fortified with such a nutrient. For calcium in particular a diet consisting mostly of unprocessed plants is insufficient. - Some foods (tomatoes are a classic example) have higher nutritional value when bought cooked and canned than when bought "fresh" because the canned product was produced with much fresher ingredients. - The majority of the US lives paycheck to paycheck. There's an economic argument to be made that heavily processed foods can be preferable to the alternatives if they allow you to get your vegetables and other nutrition more cheaply (both in direct cost savings and also in the ability to buy in bulk without spoilage). - Not everyone has the same health goals or personal chemistry, and a linearizable ordering doesn't exist for many diet choices that would apply to every individual across time. For a few choice examples, (1) roughly 1% of the population are underweight and benefit from diet choices enabling weight gain (i.e., on average probably not the proposed diet), and (2) a mostly different 1% subset with IBD benefits from the immunosuppressive effects of low to moderate alcohol consumption even despite its other negative effects (that point is still being studied/debated -- alcohol affects some individuals in that group more negatively than others, talk to your doctor).

antisthenes 5y ago

If you preface each of your statements with "too much", then suddenly all 4 can make sense and be useful.