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The health benefits of sunlight may outweigh the risk of skin cancer
151–160 of 258 posts
Re: The health benefits of sunlight may outweigh the risk of skin cancer
#152> A study published last year, for instance, examined medical data from 360,000 light-skinned Brits and found that greater exposure to UV radiation—either from living in Britain’s sunnier southern bits rather than the darker north, or from regularly using sunbeds—was correlated with either a 12% and 15% lower risk, respectively, of dying, even when the raised risk of skin cancer was taken into account. Emphasis on “m…
> I’m going to keep wearing my sunscreen most of the time when I need to be in direct sun, and continue regular screening for skin cancer
Sunscreen reduces vitamin D production, but it doesn't stop it. Wearn sunscreen. Get screened. And don't stay indoors for fear of UV.
Re: The health benefits of sunlight may outweigh the risk of skin cancer
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
>good sun exposure helps my skin feel softer and less inflamed. The UV light polymerizes collagen in presence of vitamin B. They did experiments by repairing cornea that way: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3018104/ "The aim of this study is to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of riboflavin-ultraviolet type A (UV-A) light rays induced cross-linking of corneal collagen in improving visual acuity and in s…
> couple studies on Somali immigrant population in Minnesota and Sweden - where such dark skinned population naturally gets very low on vitamin D - showed such correlation as autism rates in that population is higher than back there in Somali (and that would explain the correlation of low sunlight expo. Or autism among Somalis causes them, or their parents, to want to immigrate to Minnesota and Sweden?
No. There the vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy is correlated with autism of the child. In another study child autism was correlated with regular Swedish woman pregnancy with the 3rd trimester in winter when the deficiency is the most frequent / most serious.
It seems that autism got politicized and thus such various correlations, which may or may not be real causations, don't seem to get enough of proper scientific attention/resources. I mean, for example folic acid deficiency causes spina bifida, and it wouldn't be out-of-this-world if vitamin D (which is steroid) deficiency (or some other deficiency) would have affected prenatal development and structure of the brain which is just another body organ. Instead we spend tremendous amount of attention and energy on alleged vaccine-autism connection which hasn't been established even as mere correlation.
Re: The health benefits of sunlight may outweigh the risk of skin cancer
#154For winter I got a standing tanning machine. Which I use 2-4x a week for 1 minute per use. I calculated this was equivalent to 5-15 minutes outside, depending on time, but engages the entirety of the bodies largest organ. My (anecdotal, subjective) experience is that it helps. Both vitamin D and nitric oxide are good rationales for that. This would be economically impossible at a tanning salon. If you like to be tan,…
> I also have bright rope LEDs surrounding a few of my room ceilings, hidden behind coving. That light reflects smoothly off the entirety of the white ceilings. A great combination of very high intensity lighting, that is also gentle, diffuse and calming. Summer days, indoors, all year round. I am intrigued -- please can you share any publicly available image of this solution? I'm not sure what to google search, or w…
Here you go!
The camera dramatically auto-reduced the brightness in all the pictures. So imagine the room summer sun bright. But not harsh, very soft shadowing.
Where the ceiling shows shadow in the middle of each border, it is really just a tiny bit less bright than at the edge of the borders.
And those LED strips are blinding, even though they look off!
In the evening I turn off the ceiling lights, and the room is lit warmly by the low-lumen crystal lights from below.
The sleep cycle isn't something that comes natural to me, so I work all the angles.
Re: The health benefits of sunlight may outweigh the risk of skin cancer
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
time of day and UV index is the most important thing, right? That is how you can accurately assess the “risk” of being exposed in direct sunlight. Example: would you put on sunscreen when playing volleyball at the beach at 4:30pm, if the UV index at that time is 2 (UVI scale)? That seems completely unnecessary imo. And many people are vitamin d deficient anyway, so the minor sun exposure would certainly do more good.…
How reliable are UV indexes? Genuine question. The iOS weather app is far from 100% reliable and I wonder the margin of error regarding the UV index number it provides.
great question! My understanding is the UV index shown online and in apps is “modeled” data, not realtime.
Basically it takes into account things like ozone measurements from satellites, latitude, forecasted cloud cover, and distance from sun (time of year).
See section “Calculating the UV index” here:
https://www.epa.gov/sunsafety/learn-about-uv-index
It’s not intended to be realtime. It’s more about understanding, generally, what the risk is.
Re: The health benefits of sunlight may outweigh the risk of skin cancer
#156Well yes, given this has been the message since the problems with short sightedness in the east everyone still seems obsessed with "too much sun bad".
How about not making any public messaging so black and white. B&W messaging leads to polarised ideas on healthcare and everything else...
Re: The health benefits of sunlight may outweigh the risk of skin cancer
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since I was a little kid I was always skeptical of slathering something all over my body just to go outside. Just thought…how did people survive before this stuff if we really need it so bad.
Slathering oneself in mud if you need to endure harsh sun exposure is the most common answer I’ve seen to this question. Otherwise, I agree with your comment, the “best practice” of avoiding sun exposure is as unintuitive as the grain-heavy food pyramid.
That food pyramid hasn't been recommended in 20 years.
Re: The health benefits of sunlight may outweigh the risk of skin cancer
#158I would like to know how regular sunlight compares to the combination of vitamin D supplementation and red light therapy. If you do both of those, is that equivalent or better since it doesn't have any damaging effects of the sun?
something to think about here: Your body synthesizes vitamin D. That chemical reaction may have side-products which are not found in the supplements.
Biology is complex.
Re: The health benefits of sunlight may outweigh the risk of skin cancer
#159For winter I got a standing tanning machine. Which I use 2-4x a week for 1 minute per use. I calculated this was equivalent to 5-15 minutes outside, depending on time, but engages the entirety of the bodies largest organ. My (anecdotal, subjective) experience is that it helps. Both vitamin D and nitric oxide are good rationales for that. This would be economically impossible at a tanning salon. If you like to be tan,…
> For winter I got a standing tanning machine. Which I use 2-4x a week for 1 minute per use. I calculated this was equivalent to 5-15 minutes outside, depending on time, but engages the entirety of the bodies largest organ. Excellent idea. In my temperate climate, I use the outdoor method, with one further tweak: Cover the head and arms, which get too much inadvertent exposure anyway during daily activity.
Sounds good, I'll schedule my time to wander the neighborhood nude, except for towels around my head and arms.
Re: The health benefits of sunlight may outweigh the risk of skin cancer
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I wonder, though, if they got full body sun exposure on a regular basis, if that would change things. It seems unlikely that we would have evolved to have a single part of our body exposed to the sun while the rest wasn’t.