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The health benefits of sunlight may outweigh the risk of skin cancer

economist.com

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Re: The health benefits of sunlight may outweigh the risk of skin cancer

#51

Post by mcdeltat »

wewxjfq wrote: post #46

The way I see it: If you live where your ancestors lived for thousands of years and if you make sure your skin gets gradually attuned to the sun each year, you probably get more health benefits. But beware if you're of Northern European ancestry living in Southern USA or Australia or if you work an office job and only seek the summer sun with pale skin.

> make sure your skin gets gradually attuned

Is this a thing? Surely DNA damage from UV is dose-dependent, in which case any greater amount of UV results in a greater chance of skin cancer.

Re: The health benefits of sunlight may outweigh the risk of skin cancer

#52

Post by blooalien »

herbst wrote: post #30
calebm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a related note: I also think looking at the sun is healthy for our eyes. I've been getting more sun-in-my-eyes exposure, and at the last optometrist I had, he was surprised to find that my vision improved since my last checkup.

Is this some kind of weird meta joke or are people actually arguing about staring into the sun in 2025?

> Is this some kind of weird meta joke or are people actually arguing about staring into the sun in 2025?

Why not? People are still arguing in 2025 that the vast majority of the world's climate scientists are wrong about climate change, and there are even some who unironically argue that the Earth is flat. Science is dead. Long live "Whatever I want to believe is true and you're all wrong!"

Re: The health benefits of sunlight may outweigh the risk of skin cancer

#53

Post by globular-toast »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #33

It’s tempting to see things like this and think “well of course it does, because that’s how we evolved”. But I think that might just be post-rationalization? At the very least, I think the argument _doesn’t_ hold for periodic famine, extreme temperatures, most disease, etc even though we also evolved with those things. Is there any guiding principle that separates the things-we-evolved-with-that-are-good vs the -that…

Yeah, I've always found it a very weird and weak argument. There are plenty of things we've evolved with that would be considered pretty bad for us now. For example, we evolved as a polygamous species (like virtually all mammals), meaning harams, lots of sexless males and fighting etc.

Also important to remember evolution operates at a population level, not individual. We are descended from females that were able to survive at least pregnancy and carry the second to term, but it doesn't matter if they die in the second pregnancy. We're descended from males that were able to mate with said females, but they could have died very shortly after mating. So if you follow "what we evolved with" then that's all you're likely to get.

Re: The health benefits of sunlight may outweigh the risk of skin cancer

#54

Post by qalmakka »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #33

It’s tempting to see things like this and think “well of course it does, because that’s how we evolved”. But I think that might just be post-rationalization? At the very least, I think the argument _doesn’t_ hold for periodic famine, extreme temperatures, most disease, etc even though we also evolved with those things. Is there any guiding principle that separates the things-we-evolved-with-that-are-good vs the -that…

Exactly - as if evolution cared enough about keeping us healthy after childbearing age. It's hard to state "yeah we've evolved to live like that, of course it's good for us" because clearly keeping us alive after the age of 40 really wasn't _that_ necessary for human survival. There's a lot of perfectly natural stuff that hurts us, including sunlight. Most cancers will only occur in the latter half of our lives, where usually a human historically had already had several children that are now old enough to survive on their own.

Re: The health benefits of sunlight may outweigh the risk of skin cancer

#55

Post by uncircle »

elcritch wrote: post #15
phito wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for a species that evolved in the sun, I do not believe one bit that sun exposure, which incidentally is linked to many benefits because it’s so bloody normal, is something that can only be dealt with modern technology and we should be deathly afraid of it. Sure, UV radiation can cause mutations, but our immune system has evolved over billions of years to deal with this exact problem. Yeah, most of the time our imm…

The important piece missing from both of these comments IMHO, is that sunburns are the problematic piece. There's always going to be some risk from UV exposure, but as the parent comment points out we're evolved to deal with it and even to rely on it. There's research showing that low amounts of cellular damage is actually beneficial as it triggers cellular repair mechanisms or aptosis of senecent cells. Even here ot…

> The important piece missing from both of these comments IMHO, is that sunburns are the problematic piece.

Then the problem is light skin tone, and the advice to wear sunscreen always, only applies to them, hence my doubts.

I do not get sunburnt if I go buy groceries or if I spend 1 hour outside, like most ethnicities on Earth; yet if I dare question the dogma of sunscreen, I get downvoted, which makes me wonder if it's at all rational. It boggles my mind how it has become a kind of innocent yet taboo argument on the (English-speaking) internet.

Just google it. I mean, there's plenty of articles that say you need to wear it even if you plan to stay indoors all day. WTF.

Re: The health benefits of sunlight may outweigh the risk of skin cancer

#57

Post by Grum9 »

worthless-trash wrote: post #40
ehnto wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a lot of people. People in Australia are educated about the risk of sun exposure in school for one. Another is cultures who view being pale as a beauty standard.

Slip, Slop, Slap.

[dead]

Re: The health benefits of sunlight may outweigh the risk of skin cancer

#59

Post by annsjdhs »

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #35
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #33

It’s tempting to see things like this and think “well of course it does, because that’s how we evolved”. But I think that might just be post-rationalization? At the very least, I think the argument _doesn’t_ hold for periodic famine, extreme temperatures, most disease, etc even though we also evolved with those things. Is there any guiding principle that separates the things-we-evolved-with-that-are-good vs the -that…

Entirely case by case. It's further confounded by the fact that a bunch of things that are bad for us don't exert strong selective pressure in the first place.

> don't exert strong selective pressure in the first place

This assumes we understand how these things work in the first place. It’s very likely our understanding of evolution is incomplete.

I make this mistake a lot:

1. See thing that’s been done a long time a certain way

2. Modern recommendation is don’t do thing

3. Revised modern recommendation says “actually wait, do thing”

4. Revised modern recommendation is now ok because our incomplete model has been updated, whereas it should have always been ok because it’s been that way for a long time

Put another way: we should give more weight to a repeated pattern observed over thousands of years and heavily question any science that goes against it. Both sides are just estimations, but nowadays it’s almost assumed “old ways bad”. Way too many cases that end up being “way humans have operated for millennia is actually ok”.

Re: The health benefits of sunlight may outweigh the risk of skin cancer

#60

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

anonzzzies wrote: post #44
trallnag wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then another person (of North European ancestry looks) like a brown leatherbag at 50. Anecdotal evidence is sadly not worth a lot.

Many of those smoke or used to smoke, a lot (continues). I live in a country village in south EU and you can see immediately which of the farmers smoke and which don't. Most of them do, but the ones that don't have smooth skin and look younger than they are, the others look like leather bags indeed and older than they are. I guess you can get the same skin without smoking, I just don't see those here.

It's instructive to look at people who drive for a living. One arm will have significantly more sun exposure than the other and it's trivial to spot the difference as the sun does have a very noticeable aging effect.
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