This: https://www.outsideonline.com/2380751/sunscreen-sun-exposure-skin-cancer-science was linked on another thread. Comments? Should I take it seriously. I would like someone who knows to chime in.
Before getting too carried away with the appeal of throwing out your sunscreen and embracing Sol, it might be well to consider that:
- Apart from the (relatively low) mortality associated with common skin cancers associated with high levels of sun exposure (basal cell and squamous cell), the morbidity can be great. It’s not fun to have to visit dermatologists and plastic surgeons repeatedly for biopsies and excisions which may produce substantial scarring and disfigurement.*
- People who are out in the sun a lot tend to display bad-looking, spotty and/or saggy skin. This causes a prematurely aged look (I saw a lot of this in Texas).
- The health tradeoffs mentioned in the article are still largely speculative apart from assuring adequate vitamin D levels (which can be achieved through supplementation).
“Humanity survived” is a lousy argument for a lifestyle habit. We also survived bubonic plague and cholera quite well without pest control and proper sanitation, for what that’s worth.
The margarine analogy falls into the category of “Science/Medicine wuz wrong before!”, which is another defective argument often used by those who promote woo. Science and medicine do change recommendations on the basis of sound evidence, which is a feature and not a bug.
There is a fair amount of support for a balanced approach, i.e. encouraging short, repeated amounts of sun exposure without risking burns, as described here.
*on the other hand, getting lots of non-fatal skin cancers is a boon for pathologists like me. Keep those 88305 reimbursements coming, sun worshippers!
There’s some validity to the article. SPF protection of 75 is not better than SPF 25. We all need vitamin D and some exposure to the sun is very healthy, but getting repeated sunburns is not healthy.
Hi Jack. Generally agree with your points, and this was exactly the ref that I also found (I have a personal interest as I’m (a) Vit D insufficient and (b) spent the last few years immunosuppressed, and thus coated with factor 50 when outdoors.)
Re the link in the quote above, the** Similar articles in PubMed** panel (select See All) takes you to 95 publications, largely addressing Vit D. I’m going to take a look at a few, because I thought that the big weakness in the article in the OP was a lack of proper cites. But interesting, all the same.
j
Certainly the want of citations is a red flag. But the claim is that vitamin D supplementation is ineffective and there are other effects from exposure to sun. But this is why I raised the question. Are these claims (vitamin D supplementation ineffective, other effects of exposure) valid.
I believe that article is at odds with the advice from most medical professionals who study that stuff.
And… the American Heart Association says margarine is healthier to consume than butter.
Other potential benefits of sunlight includes exposure to red and near-infrared light causing photobiomodulation. Photobiomodulation produces a number of significant physiological changes in the tissue:
I haven’t had time to look at this carefully, but I’ll post it since the link is easy to miss in the Outside article.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joim.12496
Swedish study, 30,000 women over 20 years. On glancing through - there’s a large effect; but only BMI is used to attempting to control for confounding correlation between sunlight exposure and general healthy/fit lifestyle.
" Until the industrial revolution, we lived outside. How did we get through the Neolithic Era without sunscreen? Actually, perfectly well. "
Well, no, we died at 40. But all those cave dwellers had already had children, so evolution didn’t care, and susceptibility to cancer was not recorded in the fossil record.
Bet they didn’t have a lot of cases of Alzheimer’s in the Neolithic Era, either. Or diabetes. Or cirrhosis.
I love you, man.
And we didn’t, by and large, die at 40, either. Many of us either died at <1, or lived well into “old age”, leaving an “average life expectancy” of ~40.
Using sunscreen on the occasions when you are likely to be exposed more than usual is not going to cause a vitamin d problem, and given it’s real world effectiveness i find it highly unlikely that using it a lot if you’re someone who works out in the sun will be a problem either.
To be fair to Weller, I think he is a credible scientist, and he’s not approaching the issue like the paleo fantasists who take it as axiomatic that anything we didn’t have 50,000 years ago must be bad for us. We can debate the strength of the evidence, but he’s certainly taking an evidence-based position; and he was addressing the question of whether his conclusions are counterintuitive, to which I think his response was valid.
I read somewhere that margarine is only one molecule away from plastic
Which is bullpucky,
Well, to answer the OP, I’m definitely not spreading sunscreen on my toast anymore, that’s for certain.
Shouldn’t you be concerned about what sunscreen is doing to the world’s coral reefs?
One drop can contaminate an Olympic sized pool. Hawaii has recently banned it, I expect other places to follow suit.
Margarine has been reformulated: the point is that following the advice to use margarine instead of butter lead to high consumption of trans-fats.