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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

#181

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

jghn wrote: post #121
spullara wrote: post #92

dunno man, just had melanoma removed from my ear and if it had moved to my lymph nodes I had a 50% chance of dying within 5 years. thankfully it didn't but it was caused by sun damage incurred in my youth. I'll be wearing sunscreen and mostly avoiding direct sunlight.

That's the thing about population level trends: there's always going to be individuals with counterexamples.

It has a lot to do with the individual's makeup. My mom came from a pale lineage and had the same story as the parent comment - except for the luck part. Melanoma was common in her family and was tightly tied to excessive time in the sun as children.

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

#182

Post by lurking_swe »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #167
jnsie wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am in a unique position to confirm that they are a load of bunk. I have solar urticaria and develop hives in response to UV exposure, directly proportional to how much UV is getting through. I’ve developed hives in minutes while the UV index was supposedly only 4 and gone for relatively too long without erupting in hives the next day even when the UV index was supposedly 10.

i hate to be that person that quotes chatgpt, but this seems VERY relevant to your complaint:

“Solar urticaria is a rare condition where the skin reacts to specific wavelengths of light rather than the overall UV intensity. The UV index is a general measure of the total amount of erythema-causing UV radiation (mainly UVB) that can cause sunburn in the average person.

But in solar urticaria, the trigger might be UVA, visible light, or even a narrow band of wavelengths — and the UV index doesn’t capture that nuance.

So it’s not that the forecast is wrong — just that the UV index isn’t designed to reflect the sensitivity profile of solar urticaria.”

In other words, you’re (literally) a special case. :)

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

#183

Post by namuol »

elif wrote: post #132
namuol wrote: post #103

> 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…

The only time you will see anything stated as an absolute is when there is low or no scientific rigor. Thinking you are somehow holding the authors into account is akin to doubting a paper's veracity because it has "too many authors" or some other meaningless if not ironic standard.

Agree - my original comment was trying to highlight the actual info from the study in contrast to the suggestive headline: That there’s no causal link being claimed by the study that UV exposure decreases all-cause mortality, or in other words, sunscreen isn’t killing us.

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

#184

Post by namuol »

DennisP wrote: post #116
namuol wrote: post #103

> 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…

Double-blind experiments on this are probably impossible, but it's not like large population studies are totally worthless. It's probably best to go where the evidence points, and the article mentions other studies with similar conclusions, as well as work on possible biological mechanisms. My strategy is to get short sun exposures, use sunscreen only when I'm going to be out long enough to get burnt, and also do my…

Yep this about lines up with my current approach.

But also let’s not forget the things that tend to correlate with moderate sun exposure: Fresher air, exercise, social activity, daylight exposure on the eyes, stimulation of all the senses, etc.

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

#185

Post by muizelaar »

biimugan wrote: post #170

I think people should be highly skeptical of articles like this, even without knowing anything about the subject in question. No byline/author. No citations/links to the studies in question. Confirmation of preconceived notions that people would like to be true (e.g. the sun as a wellness remedy instead of damaging to skin), including unfounded "just so" stories and claims about evolution, diabetes, and other unrelat…

This is the Lindqvist and Weller paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43630-025-00743-6

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

#186

Post by cpncrunch »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #177
cpncrunch wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does seem to be the case. The Lindqvist study specifically said that sun avoidance was as bad as smoking iirc. Sun exposure has been one of my main activities for over 10 years. The evidence is now overwhelming.

I'm in the other camp. Sunlight never feels great and the best I've ever felt is working nights.

This isn't really about it feeling good or bad, rather it's about the effect of sunlight in significantly reducing mortality.

I agree that strong sunlight on a hot day doesn't feel good.

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

#187

Post by namuol »

tsoukase wrote: post #123
namuol wrote: post #103

> 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…

The helper verb 'may' should accompany any scientific result as the scientific method usually cannot prove causations but only negate the null hypothesis.

I still think “increased sun exposure correlates with decreased all cause mortality” makes a better headline, but then maybe that’s why I’m not an editor.

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

#188

Post by namuol »

TZubiri wrote: post #125
namuol wrote: post #103

> 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…

Sun good Science is good, but restraining all decisions behind FUTON biased double-blind longitudinal meta-analysis is not only unreasonably cognitiviely expensive, but not even the greatest idea. When making decisions to personally guide your life, you can also base them on values, heuristics, paternal advice, common wisdom, etc... It's obvious that the ideal amount of sunlight is somewhere between 0 and 100% of the…

> I didn't even need 1 subject, you need more than 360,000

If you read my whole comment, my point was that I will continue to enjoy the sun, with sunscreen. Sun good. You say sunscreen bad? No. We agree.

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

#189

Post by namuol »

bobthepanda wrote: post #130
TZubiri wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sun good Science is good, but restraining all decisions behind FUTON biased double-blind longitudinal meta-analysis is not only unreasonably cognitiviely expensive, but not even the greatest idea. When making decisions to personally guide your life, you can also base them on values, heuristics, paternal advice, common wisdom, etc... It's obvious that the ideal amount of sunlight is somewhere between 0 and 100% of the…

Two things can be true. The study says sun good. But the studies being described in the UV are specifically comparing people who stay indoors vs people who get exposed to UV by being outdoors. The studies listed are not looking at application of sunscreen, or wearing clothes to block UV, etc. This generally makes sense; stop being cooped up indoors and do things outside, but also wear UV protection.

Thank you, this is a much better comment than my original one, but this was exactly my point. Go outside more. Sunscreen probably isn’t killing you.

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

#190

Post by DoctorOetker »

qalmakka wrote: post #54
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, wher…

Selection pressure does not simply select on "did or did not reproduce" it selects on reproduction rate (compare 2 individuals, both having parented a first child, but one dies afterwards while the other continues to occasionally reproduce before dying. The latter displays higher fitness.

Its like any poisson process, a recent event does not inherently lower the probability density for the next event.

Achieving the minimum necessary for reproduction is not representative of the distribution of reproductive success scores.

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