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> 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

> 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/

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/