21 ms·

Current guidelines for sun exposure are unhealthy and unscientific – research (2019)

• Flatcircle 4y ago
  Fantastic article. The exact type of info I come to Hacker News for
• paulpauper 4y ago
  What's counterintuitive is that the most deadly skin cancer of all by far, melanoma, has the most tenuous link with sun exposure
• tubalcain 4y ago
  I see a lot of skin due to my job and let me tell you, anywhere the sun doesn't shine doesn't age.
• next_xibalba 4y ago
  From the subtitle of the article: > and quite possibly even racist And I'm out. Does racism exist? Of course. Is everything everywhere always racism? Of course not.
  • DantesKite 4y ago
    I felt the same way. I don't like the disingenuous way the article starts, because it really does dilute the serious nature of racism. It shouldn't be something off-handedly used to get a few more clicks on an article or to signal to your in-group that you're virtuous.
  • renewiltord 4y ago
    Understandable, but I think you're missing out. Better to ignore that stuff here if it bothers you. Interesting article.
    • twofornone 4y ago
      I strongly disagree. These accusatory virtue signals are everywhere, deliberate, and most importantly antithetical to reason. Ignoring this stuff is how we ended up with diversity quotas. We should all be pushing back at this point, meritocracy is literally at stake when people are hired for race/gender, and the dysfunction is already visible across many of our institutions. I came here to read an article about sunscreen, not be implicitly lectured with distilled identity politics.
      • trompetenaccoun 4y ago
        Filter out the chatter and follow the actual information. The article is on some online magazine site, who cares what they write. The original study says nothing about race whatsoever.
        • betwixthewires 4y ago
          I'm with you, but I take a different approach: mercilessly mock the chatter and noise, discuss the information. Encourage information, discourage senseless garbage.
      • deanCommie 4y ago
        Diversity quotas irrespective of skill, and those that denigrate meritocracy are antithetical to reason. But from where I sit I do not see any diversity quotas that choose race/gender over skill. There might be exceptions somewhere, I won't lie. I only know about my corner which is big tech hiring. What I see is an acknowledgement that much selection in our society (to universities, for jobs, etc) are subjective decisions that incorporate objective and subjective factors. Every student trying to get into Yale has perfect GPA, SATs, and a list of extra-curricular activities as long as my arm. So if they are equal on these measures, why not bring in slightly more folks from races that have been historically disadvantaged to offset past injustices? Is that fair to white students? No. But there is no "fair" way to make a choice like this. Big tech hiring focus on diversity is much the same - the bar is NOT lowered for women or anyone from a minority race. The last step of hiring before an offer is an objective test of programming ability. And nobody gets through those except on merit. But the FIRST step of hiring for multi-billion dollar companies is to sift through thousands of interview applicants, or contact thousands of applicants on LinkedIn with identical sounding resumes. These steps are HIGHLY subjective and unscientific - they're based on keywords, feel of recruiters, overindexing on past signals (other big tech companies, big universities, etc). The first "screen out" phase of hiring has NEVER been a meritocracy. It's always been a gut feel of who "feels" like they would be a successful candidate. This is where the diversity initiatives are focused - to try to shift the variables in a subjective non-meritocratic process to - again - offset past racial discriminations to try to even the playing field slightly. I ask you to have patience with "being lectured about identity politics". I ask you to wonder why you find virtue signals "accusatory" if they're not talking to you or about you. Don't discount those talking about this subject as "woke", or "virtue signalers" or "social justice warriors". Some of them are overly angry and vitriolic, yes. Some are tired of explaining concepts that are clear and for granted to them, thinking that at this point anyone that disagrees is simply an agitator. Not all show good faith. Some are in it for themselves, and the glory of being holier-than-thou. I'm not going to pretend that doesn't exist. But most of the concepts being discussed are sound. And there is a lot of fire behind the smoke. There is a lot of past, present, and future "racism" that still needs to be understood, and addressed.
  • postpawl 4y ago
    “People of color rarely get melanoma. The rate is 26 per 100,000 in Caucasians, 5 per 100,000 in Hispanics, and 1 per 100,000 in African Americans. On the rare occasion when African Americans do get melanoma, it’s particularly lethal—but it’s mostly a kind that occurs on the palms, soles, or under the nails and is not caused by sun exposure.” It’s saying they’re pushing sun screen for people who don’t really need it.
    • next_xibalba 4y ago
      If we read all the sentences around those you quoted, it presents a nuanced view. It takes some motivated reasoning to flatten both the relevant context here and the background that science, particularly the science of human health, is highly uncertain. And yet the author manages just that, flattening all the context and nuance into: sunscreen is racist.
      • postpawl 4y ago
        What missing context are you talking about? This is 2 paragraphs after the one I quoted and it says it even more clearly: “And yet they are being told a very different story, misled into believing that sunscreen can prevent their melanomas, which Weller finds exasperating. “The cosmetic industry is now trying to push sunscreen at dark-skinned people,” he says. “At dermatology meetings, you get people standing up and saying, ‘We have to adapt products for this market.’ Well, no we don’t. This is a marketing ploy.””
        • next_xibalba 4y ago
          > The American Academy of Dermatology recommends that all people, regardless of skin color, protect themselves from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays by seeking shade, wearing protective clothing, and using a broad-spectrum, water-resistant sunscreen with an SPF of 30 or higher > “I think that sun-protection advice,” [David Leffel, Yale] told me, “has always been directed at those most at risk”—people with fair skin or a family history of skin cancer. “While it is true that people with olive skin are at less risk, we do see an increasing number of people with that type of skin getting skin cancer. But skin cancer… is very rare in African Americans… and although they represent a spectrum of pigmentation, [they] are not at as much risk.”
  • hklgny 4y ago
    Not sure why you’re being downvoted for it. It’s a useless addition to an otherwise interesting article.
    • ghaff 4y ago
      And it's very possible the author didn't write it but an editor did. I'm not sure where one gets "racist" from the content of the article. Maybe insofar as the medical community makes blanket recommendations that arguably don't apply to/don't help black people. But it's a stretch to go from there to racism.
      • datameta 4y ago
        Agreed... I didn't notice the mention of racism in the title. I only realized after reading the article and seeing people ignore the substance in lieu of attacking a perceived slighting.
      • Apocryphon 4y ago
        Clickbait headlines have abounded over past decades from editors with SEO concerns dancing in their eyes. One would think those who are easily triggered by social justice invocations would be more attuned to it by now- they should view it as no different from any other form of attention grabbing, and no more indictment against the articles these titles disservice compared to headlines who incite other passions. How discriminating of these who see one subheading blurb and then refuse to read further.
  • devmor 4y ago
    You should read the entire article. The author discusses how pushing products meant for white skin towards dark skinned people despite negative detriment is common. That is racism.
    • kortilla 4y ago
      Unless they are being targeted, it’s absolutely not racism.
      • throwawayboise 4y ago
        Lots of products target particular races. It's only racism if it's motivated by hate, bias, a desire to cause harm, etc.
        • hgomersall 4y ago
          No, we can have racist policies. No value judgement is necessarily implied but they should be dealt with.
    • chmod600 4y ago
      It sounds more like they just want to sell more sunscreen. They don't really care what color your skin is as long as money is changing hands. Nothing racist about that. And doctors don't want to differentiate because it's safer to just say "sure, wear sunscreen all day and wear a helmet too, in case you get hit by a meteor". Nobody will blame a doctor for repeating the currently-accepted dogma. Maybe they'll blame sunscreen companies in ten years, but not the doctor.
      • devmor 4y ago
        If they are aware that doing so is putting people with darker skin at mortal risk, it's racism.
        • mod 4y ago
          I disagree. Highly immoral, but not racism. Could possibly be racially motivated, but greed seems likelier.
  • miked85 4y ago
    Everything is blamed on racism the last couple of years. The word essentially means nothing at this point.
    • hackernewds 4y ago
      Seems like an overreaction
      • miked85 4y ago
        By who?
        • worik 4y ago
        • SkittyDog 4y ago
          By you. Some things are called "racism" unnecessarily, and that causes some harms... But there is still plenty of actual, bona fide Racism that causes bigger harms. To disregard legitimate concerns about racism because you've grown frustrated with false positives is evidence of a weak morality. It's prioritizing our selfish frustrations over significant harms that other people (the victims of racism) are experiencing.
          • miked85 4y ago
            I disagree. When you blame everything on "racism", then actual racism is ignored. Boy who cried wolf.
            • SkittyDog 4y ago
              The boy who cries wolf is definitely in the wrong, that much is true... But that doesn't remove blame from the townspeople who ignored his cries. It's not a binary absolute, where one person being wrong absolves the other of any wrongdoing. Intelligent, moral people aren't obligated or forced to jump into action when someone makes an accusation of racism. We can take a moment to consider the available facts, the context, and decide whether the charge of racism seems credible. It does take effort, so there's a limit to how much attention we can give to these things... But we can also respond to the false accusations, and push back on them for being distractions and wasting the patience of people. We get the society that is as good as we choose to put in effort to make it.
  • trompetenaccoun 4y ago
    People should read the study, it's interesting: https://sci-hub.st/10.1111/joim.12496 https://sci-hub.st/10.1111/joim.12496 There's nothing about race in there anyway. Don't get tricked into these identity discussions. Both ignoring anything that has race in it as well as getting angry when they bait you with it ultimately means they have control over you, because you're easily manipulated with a single word.
  • 867-5309 4y ago
    it's reversed here: the lighter your skin, the worse off you'll be
  • bjt2n3904 4y ago
    Asterisk: They probably are using the "new" definition of racism, not the classical definition. The foundation of the "anti-racist" definition is that in any situation, a difference in outcomes has a single attribution: racism. As an example, if you give 100 children a math test -- no word problems, just algebra -- and find that there is any correlation between skin color and test performance, then the test itself must be racist, and perhaps even math itself. Similarly here, if there is a difference in how cancer affects people... what must be the cause? That's right! Racism™! This is a patently absurd understanding of racism, but I've found it extremely helpful to start discussions like these by pointing out that if we don't have a common definition of what it means for something to be racist, then we can't have a discussion about it. PS: The classical definition of racism is the idea that skin color is indicative of performance. To look at the students before or after the test takes place, and make the assumption that skin color will effect performance. The extremely fine point here is that *the skin color itself* is what will cause (or caused) the difference.
    • lern_too_spel 4y ago
      Not the test but the society that allows some groups to continue to be undereducated in mathematics. The fact that many people don't understand this and loudly proclaim their lack of understanding, typically of certain backgrounds who are not affected, is also not due to their race making their brains incapable of understanding but due to society allowing them to continue to be undereducated on this topic.
  • hemreldop 4y ago
  • polio 4y ago
    The article isn't claiming that everything everywhere is always racism. It's claiming that there is the possibility of the recommendation being racist. Perhaps you should read the article to decide for yourself how fair that characterization is.
  • betwixthewires 4y ago
    I felt the same way when I read it, but decided to keep reading anyway. The only remotely racist thing referenced is the fact that marketing companies are trying to get black people to wear sunscreen even though they don't need it. I wouldn't call it racist per se, but it is a case of someone targeting a demographic for profit, regardless of the fact that they can't benefit from the product, with no concern whatsoever for any negative effects they could experience. Definitely shady and scummy.
• renewiltord 4y ago
  Based on my experience, most "sun damage" worry comes from aesthetic concerns. Personally, as someone who has already encountered much of that, I also find the whole explorer look neat, but I don't think the health effects are the prime movers here. Also, cannot discount innate bias: love sunshine to the degree I had these solar lamps for winter. But the fact that melanomas are less likely to be fatal overall amongst us outdoor weather-beaten folk is quite gratifying. I wonder if there are genetic markers.
  • OJFord 4y ago
    > love sunshine to the degree I had these solar lamps for winter. I can sort of imagine what that might be enough to think that Wikipedia's 'lamp with solar panels' article with that name is definitely not what you mean, but I can't see anything else on it, do you have a link or model number or something?
    • renewiltord 4y ago
      Sorry. Meant Seasonal Affective Disorder lamps. I've moved to California since and have a lot of sunshine but I'm told they have nice lamps now that collimate the beam so it looks like a bright window.
      • OJFord 4y ago
        No need to be sorry, I was just curious about what it was! Thanks.
• qqtt 4y ago
  I found this quote particularly telling: > “I don’t argue with their data,” says David Fisher, chair of the dermatology department at Massachusetts General Hospital. “But I do disagree with the implications.” The risks of skin cancer, he believes, far outweigh the benefits of sun exposure. “Somebody might take these conclusions to mean that the skin-cancer risk is worth it to lower all-cause mortality or to get a benefit in blood pressure,” he says. “I strongly disagree with that.” It is not worth it, he says, unless all other options for lowering blood pressure are exhausted. Instead he recommends vitamin D pills and hypertension drugs as safer approaches. To paraphrase "the data isn't wrong, but it contradicts dogmatically held beliefs, and so a strict regime of pills and treatments are required first before indulging in this heresy". It takes a lot to break persistent medical dogmas, and these platitudes of "avoid sun exposure at all costs because skin cancer" are starting to become generational sayings that are ingrained in prevalent thinking. Also just want to point out what is touched on in the article - melanoma (skin cancer caused by UV) in the USA kills about 7000-8000, with that trend line decreasing. Heart disease kills around 700,000 people a year in the USA alone. Food for thought.
  • chasebank 4y ago
    Makes me wonder about melanoma rates within outdoor working populations, like construction workers. Do we see more or less the same ratios in their population?
    • pilsetnieks 4y ago
      From this very article: > And perplexingly, outdoor workers have half the melanoma rate of indoor workers. Tanned people have lower rates in general. “The risk factor for melanoma appears to be intermittent sunshine and sunburn, especially when you’re young,” says Weller. “But there’s evidence that long-term sun exposure associates with less melanoma.”
    • PKop 4y ago
      Read the article.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
• RappingBoomer 4y ago
  in my last job, I reviewed hundreds of medical records, many of whom had basal cell or squamous cell carcinomas (BCC & SCC)...i never saw a case where BCC or SCC caused a real problem...I never saw one where it spread elsewhere on the body other than the skin...this theory that the more skin cancers you have means you have better general health is one that has been finding more support recently..and I agree with this theory...the sun has definite benefits, and almost certainly benefits that we do not yet even understand...
  • andi999 4y ago
    Causation could be (partially) the other way round, very sick people do not get to go out. So if you screen all sick people for sun exposure you will find a lower exposure than non sick people.
• Barrera 4y ago
  > There are not many daily lifestyle choices that double your risk of dying. In a 2016 study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine, Lindqvist’s team put it in perspective: “Avoidance of sun exposure is a risk factor of a similar magnitude as smoking, in terms of life expectancy.” There's a link around "put it in perspective." Following it through to the source leads to the 2016 study, which notes: > We acknowledge several major limitations of this study. First, it is not possible to differentiate between active sun exposure habits and a healthy lifestyle, and secondly, the results are of an observational nature; therefore, a causal link cannot be proven. A further limitation is that we did not have access to exercise data from study initiation; however, similar sHR values were obtained when including exercise for those women who answered the second questionnaire in 2000. With the introduction of whole-genome scanning, a new method of getting closer to causality using observational data is Mendelian random analysis. A potential causal link between BMI and vitamin D levels has been demonstrated with this method 8. In addition, individuals with high BMI do not obtain the same increase in vitamin D levels by UV radiation as lean subjects 9. As a consequence, as BMI seems to be involved in the causal pathway of vitamin D, it should not be included as a confounder in analyses as has been performed in many studies. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/joim.12496 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/joim.12496 This adds nuance missing from the original article. Also, AFAICT, the study doesn't mention anything about sunscreen use by the women. Based on the discussion in the original article, this study looks like a smoking gun. But going a little deeper, not so much. It'd put the study into the category "needs follow-up."
• watchdogtimer 4y ago
  Should be marked 2019.
• makeitdouble 4y ago
  > we’ve been taught to protect ourselves from dangerous UV rays, which can cause skin cancer. […] > 25,871 participants received high doses for five years—found no impact on cancer, heart disease, or stroke. > How did we get it so wrong? I don’t get the fundamental premise of the article: Dermatologists warn about skin cancer from sun exposure, and the author takes issue with vitamin D not curing cancer and heart diseases. What is “wrong” ? These two facts look disjointed to me, with no specific opposition. Vitamin D not directly linked to curing cancer and heart diseases is also nothing new, there is very few scientifically proven effects of vitamin D[0] and it’s usually offered as “just in case” supplement. Dermatologists arguing skin cancer can happen doesn’t seem wrong or unproven either, and all the “sun benefits us” part doesn’t seem to contradict that part either. Am I missing some important cultural background of the author that makes it all a bigger point ? [0] https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-929/vitamin-d https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-929/vitamin... PS: is the author just arguing that extreme advice should be taken with a grain of salt ?
  • samtho 4y ago
    I think they were just making a point that this relationship between Vitamin D and good health is correlative rather than causal, i.e people who had higher levels of Vitamin D were healthy because natural production of Vitamin D is common in people who are more active, rather than Vitamin D itself made them healthy. The CTA of the article seems to focused around that we may have been overdoing it with the sunscreen advice and that there is a healthy amount of sun exposure we should be getting.
    • makeitdouble 4y ago
      Thanks! On sunscreen, my personal impression was that people were sloppy enough that the impact would be mild at most (seems the subject has also been looked into [1]), and people going for really high blocking values usually do so for beauty preferences way more than health preoccupations. [1 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30945275/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30945275/
• thenerdhead 4y ago
  It’s a great article. There definitely has been some back and forth on this topic for many years. It probably will always be like that, especially given it’s in the same realm of artificial light, eggs, and sugar. I do believe much of these problems exist because of the literal interpretation of the science. More people are thinking in absolutes rather than how one can moderate these things in our lives. Even just last year, many “influencers” on social media were misinforming younger people about the dangers of the sun. Speaking in the sense of never going outside without proper products. Debating if those products will give you the same benefits without them on ridding the risk. But none the less, selling a product at the end of the day. America is one big shopping mall with everyone holding their credit card out.
• dilap 4y ago
  There's a study on rabbits that finds you can give them skin cancer quite easily if you feed them a diet high in polyunsaturated fats. If the same holds true in humans, it could explain our high skin cancer rates, since modern diets include a lot of polyunsaturated fats. A corollary of that is that it might be a very bad idea, indeed, to stop using sunblock without also changing your diet, if you're eating a typical diet. (Because maybe the diet is causal and the coincidentally-also-increasing-at-the-same-time sunblock use is actually a mitigating factor.) Still, I do find the arguments in favor of sunlight's beneficial effects to be convincing. So my approach (/gamble) is to avoid modern sources of polyunsaturated fat (basically: seed oils and industrial ag chicken and pork) and mostly not wear sunblock. (I'll let you know how it works out.)
  • astrange 4y ago
    What do rabbits have to do with humans? Rabbits also die of GI stasis if they don’t eat grass 24/7. You gotta test with omnivores, and even then humans are more omnivorous than most other animals (like dogs are poisoned by grapes, chocolate, onions…).
    • dilap 4y ago
      Sure, it's not definitive, and rabbits are different from humans in many ways, but at the cellular level they are similar, & if skin cancer is a cellular phenomenon (say, perhaps, driven by fat composition of the cell membranes), it's likely the results would transfer. (Hard to do this kind of research in humans, so you have to use animal models and use good judgement/guess at the applicability.)
• twofornone 4y ago
  >These are dark days for supplements. Although they are a $30-plus billion market in the United States alone, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, selenium, beta-carotene, glucosamine, chondroitin, and fish oil have now flopped in study after study Since the byline brings up race, its kind an aside but I'm almost convinced that a lot of our large scale nutritional/alternative medical studies give mixed results (and are not reproducable) because researchers are unwilling to sufficiently control for genes. High level categories like "black, white, hispanic, asian" are not enough.
  • astrange 4y ago
    If the advice they’re testing was actually strong, it’d work no matter the genes you have. Dietary genes aren’t correlated to race of course, except for rare ones like Inuits adapting to eating more fat. For a large scale study I would check if they correlated for geography, blood markers and diet outside the supplements.
    • taeric 4y ago
      Maybe. It is also plausible that ancestral diets have primed people to react to different diets and needs.
      • twofornone 4y ago
        I think its absolutely certain that thousands of generations of specialization for local geographies post africa lead to disparate dietary needs. Yeah, humans can pretty much eat anything, but regularly consuming the same diet may may be ideal for one ethnic group and unhealthy for another. Hell, look at the distribution of lactose intolerance. Is drinking milk racist?
        • taeric 4y ago
          Probably more that being racially blind is a form of racism. Probably not the worst, usually.
        • 4y ago
• pkdpic 4y ago
  > Melanoma? True, the sun worshippers had a higher incidence of it—but they were eight times less likely to die from it. > Over the 20 years of the study, sun avoiders were twice as likely to die as sun worshippers. > Avoidance of sun exposure is a risk factor of a similar magnitude as smoking, in terms of life expectancy. > Vitamin D now looks like the tip of the solar iceberg. Sunlight triggers the release of a number of other important compounds in the body, not only nitric oxide but also serotonin and endorphins. It reduces the risk of prostate, breast, colorectal, and pancreatic cancers. It improves circadian rhythms. It reduces inflammation and dampens autoimmune responses. It improves virtually every mental condition you can think of. And it’s free. > the current U.S. sun-exposure guidelines were written for the whitest people on earth > People of color rarely get melanoma. The rate is 26 per 100,000 in Caucasians, 5 per 100,000 in Hispanics, and 1 per 100,000 in African Americans. > Leffell, the Yale dermatologist, recommends what he calls a “sensible” approach. “I have always advised my patients that they don’t need to crawl under a rock but should use common sense and be conscious of cumulative sun exposure and sunburns in particular,”
  • gpt5 4y ago
    The article reads in such a dogmatic way that it raises all of my fake/misleading information flags.
    • giantg2 4y ago
      "the thing that was really responsible for their good health—that big orange ball shining down from above." This was the alarm bell for me. They completely leave out that people who get sun exposure are typically doing something more active than sitting at a desk or watching TV. Maybe the physical activity explains a lot of the benefits (think there are studies supporting that). I might get a lot of hate for this, but I'm kind of tired about these articles. They claim things they can't possibly know about a topic that is largely irrelevant. It's like trying to argue about algorithmic time efficiencies without knowing the details of their use (in this case we're trying to biohack for lower mortality without knowing all the factors).
      • 4y ago
• nabla9 4y ago
  The studies quoted don't provide any strong evidence to support the claim.
• carbocation 4y ago
  This is a very interesting theory, but also low-quality evidence. It merits further study, but hard to say that it merits any change in behavior just yet. As far as I can tell, the "340 000" person study was finally published in 2020[1]. The study was an observational analysis of 342,000 dialysis patients. There was no attempt to measure personal exposure to UV (FTA: "it was not feasible to determine personal exposures to UV radiation and temperature"). Rather, these exposures were approximated by dialysis center zip code. I can understand why David Fisher would say that he doesn't question the data, but doesn't agree with the implications. 1 = https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/JAHA.119.013837 https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/JAHA.119.013837
  • cpncrunch 4y ago
    Have you looked at all the other studies, e.g. Lindqvist? [1] [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24697969/#:~:text=We%20found%20that%20all%2Dcause,population%20attributable%20risk%20of%203%25 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24697969/#:~:text=We%20found....
  • Gimpei 4y ago
    This is why journalists need to learn some basic stats. The credulity with which he takes the pro-sun researchers claims, the ignorance he displays about the shortcomings of observational studies are as depressing as they are common. Not saying, by the way, that I don’t believe the sun hypothesis, I just think this article displays false confidence. Science is hard; when you present the latest theory as The Truth, all you do is undermine long term faith in science. Sometimes these new discoveries bear out, but most of the time, they don’t. See this pattern enough and it becomes reasonable to conclude that scientists are full of shit.
    • xpe 4y ago
      Well said in many ways; however, it isn't clear that having more statistics savvy journalists would address the problems associated with media economics and incentives.
      • 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• gandalfff 4y ago
  I have sensitive skin that turns red easily in the sun, especially at the locations where I have scars from acne and other injuries. With my atrophic scars, we know that UV can reduce collagen levels which would reduce the healing potential at those sites. For these reasons, I avoid UV exposure to my face as much as possible. For fair-skinned people like me, I would recommend generously applying sunscreen to face and hands and leaving the other areas uncovered if you are out in the sun for less than an hour or so with moderate UV index, or less than 20 minutes or so with high UV index. Longer than that, consider applying sunscreen to the rest of your body as well. Of course, ymmv.
  • CSSer 4y ago
    There are other benefits to this approach too. You'll visibly age slower. I've yet to hear anyone say that your skin has to absorb vitamin D from your face or hands for it to be effective.
• devmunchies 4y ago
  I've internalized the view of "your skin is your largest organ", so I treat as one. I don't generally put things on my skin I wouldn't put in my mouth. Most sun exposure is on the nose, ears, arms. If some sun exposure is healthy, then the best way to do it is to be completely naked and only be in the sun for 10 minutes. By exposing more surface area, you can get as much sun in 10 minutes as you would by just exposing you face for 2 hours. No burns. In engineering terms, it's like load balancing the sun across several body parts. There was just an article I saw last year about a sunscreen recall because it contained ingredients that caused leukemia or something. Not to mention some of the mental health benefits of sun. If you want to reduce sun exposure, probably better to shade yourself with clothes or umbrellas than put chemicals on your skin, or use something natural like zinc on sensitive areas like nose and ears. Also, there is more red light around sunrise/sunset. That's healthier light. You want to avoid blue light (UV), which is magnified (like a magnifying glass on the atmosphere) in the middle of the day.
  • GekkePrutser 4y ago
    I've never heard of this 'load balancing' being a thing. You can get totally sunburned on an exposed spot. Or do you mean in terms of vitamin D generation?
    • adhesive_wombat 4y ago
      I think the point is that you can get the same vitamin D dose from a gentle exposure of a lot of skin, or a massive and damaging over-exposure of a small part of your skin, or a spectrum in between. The same general idea that you could light a room with a single LED die overdriven to thermal death in minutes, or many adequately-cooled underdriven ones virtually indefinitely. Or maybe more similarly, cooking with a 10kW cutting laser rather than an electric stovetop would make a huge mess of your cookware.
      • devmunchies 4y ago
        exactly. One solar panel pummeled in the sun for 6 hours vs 6 solar panels in the sun for only one hour. Similar amount of energy absorbed.
• dinkleberg 4y ago
  I read this article a couple years ago and it definitely influenced my thoughts on the matter. I think this is yet another case of us collectively ignoring common sense. We know that UV radiation is damaging to the skin and can cause skin cancer. Instead of rubbing chemicals on our skin to negate these effects, it is better to avoid being out in direct sunlight when the UV index is high, especially if you're super pale. If you have to go out at mid day for a decent length of time, wear a big hat and clothes that cover you up. I'm on the pale end of the spectrum and if I go out at say 2pm when the UV index is at 10 it'll be physically painful within a few minutes. However, when I go for my daily walks earlier in the day or later in the afternoon when the UV index is say 3-4, I go without sunscreen and feel great. And even though I supplement vitamin D, the effects of sunlight is clearly better. Also I think it is safe to imagine that most of our ancient ancestors weren't going out in the most intense sunlight and stripping close to naked for hours to develop a nice tan.
  • thenerdhead 4y ago
    Our ancient ancestors such as those in Egypt would use the sun to fight off bilirubin with newborns by rotating them next to a sun-lit window. So yeah, common sense.
    • drjasonharrison 4y ago
      Egyptian context: A glass free window. Modern context: UV light therapy for newborns.
  • mizzao 4y ago
    This article set off a lightbulb as a possible explanation for the prevalence of osteoporosis in older Asian women. If the mechanism is: unfiltered sunlight -> Vitamin D production -> increased calcium absorption -> decreased risk of osteoporosis; then in many Asian cultures, the desire for women to have fair skin, cover up as much as possible, use sunscreen judiciously, and even use umbrellas when going outside; would certainly cause a Vitamin D deficiency and increased risk of osteoporosis by old age. Has anyone measured if this is possible?
  • 4y ago
• GekkePrutser 4y ago
  This makes sense. I recently saw an article in the local news that said the same as the dermatology academy mentioned in the article: Any sun exposure is supposedly bad and has to be avoided. And the concept of building up tolerance was said to be nonsense, apparently any exposure is bad even when you don't burn. What I've always done is build up my tolerance by getting tan during the spring so I can walk around without sunscreen in summer. Of course I don't go crazy with it, and I try to avoid direct sunlight in high-UV situations (e.g. walking on the shaded side of the street) but I take it when there is no option. It works fine for me, I rarely get sunburn and when I do it's minor, just a little red glow and sensitivity. Even though I have very pale skin I tan and burn very slowly, luckily. I lived in Australia a while in the early '00s while the ozone hole was still around and the same approach worked even there I live in a country (Spain) that has lots of sun so I don't want to go out with cream every day. The only times I use it is when I'm outside for a long time and I feel I'm getting close to burning. I get that it's totally bad what I see many Northern European tourists do: They stay indoors most of the summer and then take a 2-week holiday to the costa's where they lay in the sun for 12 hours a day. Obviously this is totally bad, even with suncreen you will get totally burned to a crisp. In any case, I'll see. Maybe I'm wrong but in that case the damage is done already. But I don't think sun exposure can be as bad as they say.
  • manmal 4y ago
    Why not just wear a hat if you don’t want cream?
    • RamRodification 4y ago
      Arms and legs.
      • manmal 4y ago
        Skin exposure is quite different there because unlike the head they get a change in angle way more often. Sure you can get sunburn there too, but it’s harder to do.
      • 4y ago
• raverbashing 4y ago
  I'll go with "the sun is a deadly laser". I'll suggest anyone that disbelieves that to spend some 30min into a moderate/high UV intensity day outside without sunscreen. Especially around midday. Sure, don't avoid the sun completely, but don't play with it It's true that sunlight increases Vit D and Nitric Oxide, other claims are much feeble and holy mother of selection bias to claim all that is due to the sun!
  • throwaway202022 4y ago
    > I'll suggest anyone that disbelieves that to spend some 30min into a moderate/high UV intensity day outside without sunscreen. Especially around midday. 30 minutes? I did that today for two hours. My arms, legs, face, and neck were all exposed without sunscreen, and I didn't burn at all. It all depends on your skin type.
  • easrng 4y ago
    Not anymore, there's a blanket.
  • smt88 4y ago
    > I'll suggest anyone that disbelieves that to spend some 30min... I do this daily for up to 6 hrs on the weekend. I have never had a sunburn. You seem to have assumed all humans are light-skinned, which is something the article warns about right at the top.
    • raverbashing 4y ago
      No, and in fact you're assuming I might be. I stand by my comment and if you do have darker skin you can adjust that time for your case
      • smt88 4y ago
        > you're assuming I might be I don't know what you think "assuming" means. I'm not assuming it. You said anyone should spend 30 min in the sun and see how badly it hurts them. I can spend an entire day in the sun without being sunburned. > if you do have darker skin you can adjust that time for your case This further proves that light skin was a vital premise of your claim (which is false).
• the__alchemist 4y ago
  Something to keep in mind that's strongly in sunscreen's favor: Sun exposure has a dramatic (over spans of years) effect on how your skin looks. People who have low sun exposure, or high sunscreen look look noticibly younger. I can't think of a reproducible way to look younger than preventing UV exposure.
  • throwaway98797 4y ago
    Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!
    • tayo42 4y ago
      It feels good to look good and younger though. When i shave and look younger I always kind of feel like OK I might have a few more years of not falling apart
      • steve_adams_86 4y ago
        That’s the thing though. Same body, same mind; you didn’t actually need to shave to feel that way. I get the sentiment of course, but I think there’s value in seeing past it too.
    • somehnguy 4y ago
      Seems there might be a balance between the extremes of being afraid of the sun vs looking like a used up leather boot..
      • asdff 4y ago
        Among my ancient relatives those that look darker from the sun look better in old age anyway than those who stay indoors and pasty. Healthier looking for sure.
  • 4y ago
• jefftk 4y ago
  This article is from 3 years ago, and talks about how there are upcoming studies that will give us more information. Is there a good summary of what we currently know?
• thyrox 4y ago
  One thing i learned from this article is if you have low vitamin D it's better to not eat any d supplements - as that is equal to putting little chips of ice on a thermometer to get it down to 98.4 when you are trying to measure your fever. Those vit d supplements will only skew the one thing that actually tells you how much deficiencient you are in getting enough sunlight as it correlates quite directly with it (most other things look more long term).
• danielovichdk 4y ago
  I read this while listening to "Here comes the Rain again". Great piece. Makes sense. Sun is pretty good with everything it shines on. And you can definitely feel it has a positive effect on your mood and your skin.
• syntaxing 4y ago
  Wouldn’t this be very obvious in certain Asian countries (Japan, South Korea, and China)? Being pale skin is extremely culturally coveted since it’s seen as beauty (also pale skins means you don’t work on the farms so historically speaking, pale skin is like being fat in the medieval times). However, anecdotally I have not noticed any of the stated benefits of “sun exposure” in those countries.
  • maximus-decimus 4y ago
    Lack of sun exposure is allegedly the reason Japanese kids get myopia, so they don't seem to get much sun exposure at all.
    • syntaxing 4y ago
      Lack of sun exposure or lack of “large environments” where your eye can focus further distances? While they’re extremely hard to separate in real life, it’s different from what the article is suggesting.
      • bbojan 4y ago
        Sun exposure. See e.g. https://www.aao.org/editors-choice/sunlight-exposure-reduces-myopia-in-children https://www.aao.org/editors-choice/sunlight-exposure-reduces...
        • LodeOfCode 4y ago
          >study examined the effect of a school-based program encouraging outdoor activities on myopia. "Outdoor activities" is a terrible way to differentiate between sun exposure and large environments
• legulere 4y ago
  Sadly the article talks about sun exposure being a confounder to vitamin D and positive health outcomes, but not about further confounders. If you are already sick you will go out less into the sun.
  • DangitBobby 4y ago
    I'd worry more about the studies covering every possible confounding factor than the article itself. The conceivable confounding factors are practically without limit. The same can be said for data backing the "sun bad" schools of thought.
• qgin 4y ago
  Concerning the referenced study that equates negative effects of sun-avoidance to smoking: https://sci-hub.se/10.1111/joim.12496 https://sci-hub.se/10.1111/joim.12496 > First, it is not possible to differentiate between active sun exposure habits and a healthy lifestyle. People who are healthy get outside more. People who engage in physical activity tend to do quite a bit of it outside. Despite the term "sun avoidance" this is not about people who intentionally avoid the sun. It is about people who for whatever reason do not have much sun exposure.
  • pigeonhole123 4y ago
    This is an unavoidable problem of any observational study. Do we have any randomized controlled trials that support the current dogma of sun = bad?
    • derbOac 4y ago
      There were some randomized controlled trials in Australia where they instructed people to use sunscreen vs not and then followed them up over 10-15 years or so. They couldn't rigorously control use over the period of the study but found that people differed by condition, and the group instructed to use sunscreen had lower rates of melanoma and markers of skin aging. I would post links but when I search for the studies I get a barrage of summaries without actually linking to the original study. I think this study is part of it: doi:10.1001/archderm.139.4.451 I think this summarizes another part of the study: https://www.cancer.org.au/blog/world-leading-research-confirms-regular-sunscreen-use-can-prevent-melanoma https://www.cancer.org.au/blog/world-leading-research-confir...
• jelliclesfarm 4y ago
  the title reminded me of Noel Coward's ditty 'Mad Dogs and English Men'from the film "A Night On The Town": https://youtu.be/pzcAjd1vO4k https://youtu.be/pzcAjd1vO4k
• bricemo 4y ago
  People have such a hard time with the concept of a trade-off. Life is not a video game where there is an optimal single answer for everyone every time. It’s complicated, especially with something like biology. So place your bets: do you want possibly better blood pressure, higher incidence of melanoma, and faster aging of skin? Or do you want benefits of more sun exposure and greater risk of cancer? The answer is: it depends on your family history, your lifestyle, and a bunch of other things. I know that organizations like American Dermatology or Outdoor magazine have to water down their message so it’s digestible, but it annoys me when people expect “The Answer”. Science is constantly updating.
  • bccdee 4y ago
    > it annoys me when people expect “The Answer” I don't think it's unreasonable that people expect clear public health guidelines. I don't want to trudge through a thousand pages of research, I want the department of health to say "well we had some experts read the papers, and if you do X and Y and Z you'll probably be fine." I'd appreciate more details beyond that, of course, especially if it's an area of particular interest to me. But I can't be that interested in everything, and sometimes it's good just to put out a guideline.
    • deleted 4y ago
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    • mikkergp 4y ago
      I understand why you think this isn't unreasonable -- I just don't think it's _possible_ for most things (that aren't overt poisons, i.e. smoking, lead, etc). If you get skin cancer, you'll always wish you'd done more. There's just too many variables, and the department of health will likely always be too conservative(see below) for some people's take, so then which "experts" do you listen to? The reality of the advice for sun is probably similar to most things -- You need some sun, but not too much. And no one probably knows the answer, and it will probably change as a result of climate change and other factors. My wife is a high risk pregnancy because she’s over 35, but after probing the doctors what we realize is that for some women at some point between the ages of 30 and 45 the risks to your pregnancy may increase some variable amount but you know what is funny, that because these women are more closely monitored, high risk pregnancies may actually have better outcomes than low risk pregnancies! And so there’s this epically long laundry list of things that you’re not supposed to do, with very little specific guidance on the risks you might take on. But if you really want experts. The Skin Cancer Foundation at Skincancer.org suggests a shotglass full of sunscreen over your entire body every day 30 minutes before you go out, even when it's cloudy. Also, that's not enough! For a full sun protection strategy seek the shade whenever possible, wear sun-safe clothing, a wide-brimmed hat and UV-blocking sunglasses: https://www.skincancer.org/skin-cancer-prevention/sun-protection/sunscreen https://www.skincancer.org/skin-cancer-prevention/sun-protec...
• rsanek 4y ago
  By the way, this is from (2019)
• muhehe 4y ago
  Many comments here say this article is bad. I thought so after reading perex saying sunscreen is racist. Can you even write article these days without calling something racist?
• phendrenad2 4y ago
  Here's the fatal flaw in this article: > Wouldn’t all those rays also raise rates of skin cancer? Yes, but skin cancer kills surprisingly few people: less than 3 per 100,000 in the U.S. each year This is like saying "Don't people who slather themselves in honey and walk bare naked to the woods get eaten by bears more? Sure, but bears kill surprisingly few people, just 59 out of 1,000,000 yearly"
  • sega_sai 4y ago
    If honey and bare walk would prevent >59 deaths from other causes, that'd be still reasonable.
• IshKebab 4y ago
  Mmm yeah I'd take a look at this photo before deciding to skip the sun cream. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trucker-accumulates-skin-damage-on-left-side-of-his-face-after-28-years-on-the-road/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trucker-accumulates-skin-damage...
• deleted 4y ago
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• donsupreme 4y ago
  I know so many parents who would slather thick layer of suncreen for their kids to play in their backyard ... even when it's not sunny.
  • EdwardDiego 4y ago
    Clouds reduce UV, but it still penetrates (also, apparently, it can actually enhance UV at times [0]). In my country (New Zealand), in summer you can get sunburned in about 10 - 20 minutes on a cloudy day, compared to 5 - 10 minutes on a clear day. But then, we tend to have much thinner ozone above us in our summer than countries in the Northern Hemisphere.[1] [0]: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2004RG000155 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2004RG00... [1]: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/ozone-aus.html https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/ozone-aus.html
• jamal-kumar 4y ago
  I had some pretty crappy skin issues (Dermatitis and occasionally psoriasis) starting in childhood, but as an adult I moved to a tropical country - boom no more problems. I don't even think I have allergic reactions to cats and dogs anymore. Wild how much your health and mood improves when you can get daily sunlight year round. There's the rainy season for sure, but there's usually a window in the morning of a few hours or so to go for a nice walk in.
  • wincy 4y ago
    The last two winters I’ve had some really bad mental problems. Two winters ago I spent savings and that night booked a morning flight to Florida, which helped a lot. The second time I didn’t have money to blow so I told my wife I was leaving and going to Florida, got in the car and turned off my phone (it was more traumatic and not a good time, she was very upset about me effectively abandoning her and our children. And I was effectively insane for the next two hours, which is good because if I had been thinking clearly I could have booked a flight and ended up 1500 miles away with no plan). About an hour of driving later I snapped out of it, but I’m pretty sure the lack of sunlight where I live in the winter is making me go crazy.
    • nradov 4y ago
      I'm not a doctor but it's likely you have something more going on mentally than just lack of sunlight. For the sake of yourself and your family, please see a psychiatrist.
    • staticman2 4y ago
      If you haven't done it you can try one of those Seasonal Affective Disorder lights that is supposed to simulate sunlight.
      • barry-cotter 4y ago
        If the light box isn’t working the problem may be that you’re just using enough. People go up to 90,000 lux. https://lorienpsych.com/2020/12/19/light-therapy/#:~:text=Eliezer%20Yudkowsky%20built%20another%20light%20to%20treat%20his,10%2C000%3B%20you%20can%20see%20the%20schematics%20here%20 https://lorienpsych.com/2020/12/19/light-therapy/#:~:text=El....
• compiler-guy 4y ago
  Those arguing that we can't conclude anything without a randomized, controlled trial need to reread [1]. Yes, randomized, controlled trials are better, and the gold standard. No, they aren't always available and sometimes--even often--science can draw conclusions with evidence that came from other sources. [1] https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/363/bmj.k5094.full.pdf https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/363/bmj.k5094.full.pdf
• kashunstva 4y ago
  The published subtitle of the article seems deliberately click-baity/inflammatory. “quite possibly even racist” When there are so many places where systemic racism shows up in clear and demonstrable ways, why complicate your thesis with a completely unfounded assertion? In any case, like “code smell” this article has a “journalism smell.” Hand-waving, breezy style; over-identification with certain groups of researchers. And of course, cursory treatment of the evidence. He points out the lack of improvement in certain end-points among subjects supplemented with vitamin D. Who were the subjects? Randomized? Matched controls? Matched how? We’re any outcomes positive? In other words are we seeing evidence cherry picking of evidence? In fact so little is mentioned in the article that he may as well have given a list of PubMed links and just directed the readers to figure it out for themselves. I don’t know what the right answer is, but the only TL;DR from this piece is “There’s some controversy here.”
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• 999900000999 4y ago
  To be fair, having different recommendations per race is problematic. The rapper Logic is African American, but he probably needs more sunblock than Akon. I imagine Italians can tolerate more sunlight than Norwegians Like with most medical advice what works for Billy might not work for Andy. But we have a massive medical industrial complex which needs to sell as much crap as possible. Wouldn't surprise me if the sunblock manufacturers are behind some of this
• civilized 4y ago
  "Stay out of the sun and if your blood pressure gets bad, just take hypertension drugs". What a creepy position from the anti-sunlight crowd.
  • FollowingTheDao 4y ago
    Right? It's just like my doctors telling me it's ok to be homeless, just take your medications to deal with the stress!
• FollowingTheDao 4y ago
  I could not get past that fist paragraph: "Although they are a $30-plus billion market in the United States alone, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, selenium, beta-carotene, glucosamine, chondroitin, and fish oil have now flopped in study after study." What? Fish oil flopped? They did every study combination they could on Fish Oil and Omega 3? They even filtered out for genetics? They are just starting, it is no where near finished! FADS1 and FADS2 Gene Polymorphisms Modulate the Relationship of Omega-3 and Omega-6 Fatty Acid Plasma Concentrations in Gestational Weight Gain: A NISAMI Cohort Study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8912382/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8912382/ Give vitamin B6 to someone who is deficient and guess what, it will not flop. But I would bet none of you have had a B6 test, correct? The studies did not flop. They are still showing casualty but more work needs to be down on who they might help. Yet he talks about vitamin D like it has somehow escaped these problems? Because on guy said something? That guy suffered from "my supplement is the best supplement and only supplement that effects health" disorder.
• marmada 4y ago
  Hm.. one one hand I can believe this. On the other hand, I believe it is well known that sun-screen is necessary in order to prevent one's skin from aging. What should I do?
• karaterobot 4y ago
  > Sunburn was probably a rarity until modern times, when we began spending most of our time indoors. Suddenly, pasty office workers were hitting the beach in summer and getting zapped. That’s a recipe for melanoma. This speculation on the author's part, at least, makes no sense. People have been getting sunburns for a long time[1]. The word "sunburn" in English dates to 1650, but treatments for sunburn are at least as old as the ancient Egyptians, who wrote down numerous treatments for it, including breast milk. I'm picturing all those Bedouin office workers wearing their keffiyehs and robes in the desert. Looks cool, sure, but might it also serve another purpose? [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23888738/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23888738/
• tasty_freeze 4y ago
  I have vitiligo. Being a pale person it doesn't show up except in the summer when my skin tans a bit. Everyone has heard that melanin is the body's defense against too much UV exposure. Once during a visit with my dermatologist I asked if there was a connect between having vitiligo and increased skin cancer, expecting her to say yes. Instead she reacted as if I had asked a complete non sequitur. I had to make explicit my chain of reasoning (vitiligo means areas with no melanin production, meaning more UV damage, meaning more chance of skin cancer) and she half-heartedly told me no, she had never heard of such a thing. It seems like there should be an obvious connection, but apparently not. It made me question whether she was just incurious or if there really is that loose of a connection between UV and skin cancer. BTW I've had two patches of skin cancer removed by this doctor, both on my neck/shoulder area, which is not affected by my vitiligo.
  • cup 4y ago
    Doctors aren't scientists. Most likely incurious and also uninterested.
    • skullone 4y ago
      Dang, that comment hit hard. True, but hard
    • jamal-kumar 4y ago
      It depends on the doctor. I know some who keep up with stuff, and some who don't and just rake in the cash. It's worth making friends with the ones who keep up with stuff. Doctors like to party but they're so fucking overworked that they hit you up at like 11pm most of the time.
  • mactrey 4y ago
    I also have vitiligo. Vitiligo sufferers have overall significantly lower rates of skin cancer. While the reason is unknown, in my mind the connection between "immune system aggressively attacks skin cells" and "less skin cancer" makes sense.
    • 4y ago
• humanrebar 4y ago
  I'm surprised age and obesity aren't mentioned more in this article. It seems like both lead to less sun exposure and are also comorbid with heart disease, low vitamin D levels, etc. If obesity and age explains the low sun exposure (less likely to be sunbathing on beaches, etc.), the assumed causality is at least oversimplified if not outright mistaken. The evidence for a sunlight-triggered mechanism for the production of sunlight is interesting, though. I wish the article worked more to connect that finding to everything else.
• YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
  >> Melanoma? True, the sun worshippers had a higher incidence of it—but they were eight times less likely to die from it. Hm. So, having read the article I know how many times less likely are "sun worshippers" to die from melanoma but I don't know how higher is its incidence among them. Why quantify one thing and not the other? That's one of the things that make this article read very fishy.
• mensetmanusman 4y ago
  During the pandemic I took hour long walks in the afternoon pretty consistently six days a week or so, I got a tan for the first time in over a decade and ended up feeling much healthier in turn. All my dry skin issues etc. went away…
• stevebmark 4y ago
  I'm surprised that they didn't mention that sunscreen blocks about 99% of vitamin D production. It doesn't seem wise for people who spend most of their time indoors to slather on sunscreen every time they go outside, even for 5 minutes, given their sun exposure is much lower than what is likely healthy. There was also a HN article a few years ago about a dev who said one thing they wish they had known about earlier in their career was was to get more sun exposure, because they were facing osteoporosis later in life.
  • mdorazio 4y ago
    As a counterpoint, every single person I know who is careful about sun exposure also takes Vitamin D supplements.
• Helmut10001 4y ago
  My own observation is not scientific. Still - I saw a big impact after taking Vitamin D. Note that I do not take any supplement or medicine, almost never, even when I am really sick. I had various unspecific problems (random infections, inflammations etc.) - all of these disappeared after deiciding to take Vitamin D daily half a year ago. I do not have an explanation other than it works.
• thirdlamp 4y ago
  What I didn’t see discussed was the possibility of the reverse causation. People that have more diseases spend less time outside and therefore have lower levels of vitamin D. Would explain why vitamin D supplements don’t seem to work in the studies mentioned in the article. Does anyone here know?
• kkfx 4y ago
  Most wide-public guidelines are unhealthy and unscientific simply because they are the results of some lobbyist pushing some product. If we go through recent history a thing that's really difficult these days [1] we'll see many examples, let's say for foods: - blue fish are the protein of the sea, eat many! Few years later blue fish are the pollutant-eaters of the sea, avoid them! - cigarettes are good for health! They kill seasonal germs! Smoke! Few years later cigarettes should be banned they are absolutely unhealthy! - artificial tanning is safe for skin than Sun exposure! Than artificial tanning provoke skin cancer! - radioactivity at small doses are good for health, help fetus to develop stronger, help against baldness! Radioactivity is dangerous and lethal! .... The REAL issue is that to avoid such phenomenon we need a PUBLIC-only really developed and religiously separate from the private sector public research for the society, with public bodies who publish their results for any cohort of citizens (witch means from real papers to abstracts for the large public) and of course the little we have had, when real innovation have happened, was destroyed quickly cannibalizing their results for private profits. Just see the outcome for IT or from big pharma. Oh BTW such move it's the key for the win of China and Russia, since both still have public research while we haven't anymore. [1] YES, my dears fellow HNers we do have hyper-fast and hyper-big search engines BUT we have nothing public really good at finding really past events we do not know by some keywords, just try to generate let's say a map of how many floods per area we have experienced in recent years: IF someone have published that we can profit from such results, if not building out of the web it's far from easier. When someone do something similar for very specific aspects likely end up here on HN like the recent Reddit Map or some Babarasi network analyses etc because there is no public generic tool for such research
• DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  Is there any data on vitamin D production that compares being outside exposed directly to the sun versus being outside but under a shade or with clothes on? I understand that our pupils adapt a lot and give us an illusion of constant luminance when in fact there is actually a huge light difference between indoors and outdoors in the shade. But I never found any info linking this with vitamin D production?
• DeathArrow 4y ago
  >Current guidelines for sun exposure are unhealthy and unscientific, controversial new research suggests—and quite possibly even racist. How did we get it so wrong? Everything seems to be racist these days. Sunscreen, math...
• collaborative 4y ago
  I struggled with eczema for years. At some point I wished I could cut off limbs and be done with the pain. Previously, I relied on unhealthy doses of steroids/corticoids and layers of vaseline covered by cotton medical apparel. Eczema got better during Summer (sunlight exposure). Sainsbury's multi-vitamins have cured me. I don't need a study to tell me this is true
• MikeOfAu 4y ago
  The article makes no mention of Photobiomodulation (and there’s no mention in these comments at the time of writing). And that's odd. Because that's the HUGE idea here. Yes, there are concerns about the harms associated with the UV end of the spectrum. But there are also the massive benefits from the Near Infrared (NIR) end. Certain NIR wavelengths, around 810nm to 850nm, penetrate up to 5cm into the body and have a dramatically positive effect on mitochondria, creating the most powerful sub-cellular antioxidant (melatonin) to manage Oxidative Stress. This is well-established science now. Indeed, the exact mechanism is known (cytochrome c oxidase, etc). It turns out that for good health it helps to be exposed to the Sun (and specifically NIR). We're more plant than we realise (a different mechanism obviously). And, if you think about it, how on earth could we have not evolved to take advantage of the “free” energy provided by the Sun, particularly the NIR part of the spectrum which actually delivers about half of the energy. Here's an explanation from MedCram: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YV_iKnzDRg&t=2878s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YV_iKnzDRg&t=2878s
• mikkergp 4y ago
  It seems that there is even some level of doubt that we even _know_ that sun exposure causes melanoma, and what that means, I think we can assume very few people are following a zero tolerance policy of unprotected sun exposure. Reading through a few abstracts, it seems like the connection between sun exposure and melanoma isn’t even all that clear. They make connections between childhood sunburns and melanoma in old age. I kinda get the methodology but it feels too tenuous to make a zero tolerance recommendation, and this seems reflected in the commentary or the papers.
• blindmute 4y ago
  I've been living this way consciously for years. It's not shocking that the sun, which we evolved alongside for millions of years, is probably good to see once in a while. It's not shocking that putting chemical creams on your skin every day is probably not great for your health. Anyone else noticing that a whole lot of lifestyle recommendations are slowly moving back toward "just do whatever they did like 2500 years ago"?
• noxer 4y ago
  "...and quite possibly even racist." No need to read further, what an absolutely stupid thing to say. Maybe the author should open a dictionary and look up the word "racist". (I hope he did in the years after he wrote that.)