Moderation in all things!
Sun is Ok, just not sunburn.
Are you sure? Most of the publicity I’ve been seeing for the last decade or two seems to have been saying that enough sun to cause any tanning is enough to do damage. (Though not everyone will get skin cancer from it, of course; but not everyone will from occasional sunburn, either.)
Vitamin D is made from cholesterol in the skin. That means you need to expose lots of skin to the sunlight to make enough.
Some scientists recommend exposing around a third of the area of your skin to the sun (5Trusted Source).
According to this recommendation, wearing a tank top and shorts for 10–30 minutes three times per week during the summer should be sufficient for most people with lighter skin. People with darker skin may need a bit longer than this.
Just make sure to prevent burning if you’re staying in the sun for a long time. Instead, try going without sunscreen for just the first 10–30 minutes, depending on how sensitive your skin is to sunlight, and apply sunscreen before you start burning.
It’s also perfectly fine to wear a hat and sunglasses to protect your face and eyes while exposing other parts of your body. Since the head is a small part of the body, it will only produce a small amount of vitamin D.
Yes, over exposure can be slightly dangerous, but the real danger is burning. And it does depend a lot on your skin type- my skin is darker and I easily tan naturally. My wife cant tan at all.
So, Burning= BAD!
No sun at all= BAD!
Try for a happy medium.
Scabby knees! I spent a good chunk of my childhood playing pickup games of road hockey with any neighbourhood kids who felt inclined to join. We eventually got goalie pads, but didn’t have them when we started. No one worried about it.
I was at an emergency medicine conference, possibly in the States. The speaker asked whether we thought playgrounds had gone too far in making things safe. His point was some children were killed or permanently paralyzed by accidents each year, and these were thought to be avoidable. I can’t remember the exact number he used. I think it was an American conference, and the number was double digits, perhaps between twenty and sixty. Is this worth it? Were they risk-taking kids who might have been hurt doing something else? I still don’t know what to feel about it, to be honest. What number is realistically too many? I’ve seen far more kids hurt by having the older, heavy TV sets fall on them. But any number is concerning. I’ve not been to a playground for years but my memory of the 3 story one at my public school are fond ones.
My son was breastfed, and an October baby. His doctor said to make sure he got outside everyday for at least 20 minutes (didn’t have to be a continuous 20 minutes), with his face exposed. Once it started to warm up, and got to be sunscreen weather, his doctor said he didn’t need it before 11am or after 4pm. Got to be sort of complicated when he started preschool, but by then, he was drinking cow’s milk.
Not getting the connection between breast feeding and sun exposure…
No added vitamin D in breast milk?
Yeah, that’s it exactly. Human breastmilk does not have vitamin D in it. Formula does.
Actually, what ended up happening was that because my son was very difficult to nurse for the first few weeks, he got a little formula in the beginning-- until he was 5 weeks old, he got 4-8oz formula (1-2 newborn bottles) a day. Whenever I felt bad that he wasn’t being solely breastfed, I would remind myself that at least he was getting a little vitamin D supplement, which was good for a winter baby, and it was a cold winter right after he was born.
Human breastmilk doesn’t have iron, either. Babies are born with a reserve of vitamin D and iron. The iron lasts about 6 months, which is why that is the age that pediatricians say to start babies on solid food, and baby cereals have a lot of iron.
I’m not sure how long the vitamin D babies are born with would last if they had no sun exposure, but I don’t think a full 6 months, considering that our son’s doctor was concerned about vitamin D, but not at all about iron.
We had a merry-go-round like that at my nursery school (or, as we’d call it now, daycare). The big kids would run on the outside while the little kids sat on it and squealed. It was fun until the day my hand slipped and I flew twenty feet off the merry-go-round onto gravel and split my chin wide open.
The daycare ladies called my mom to take me to urgent care, I got stitches, and the merry-go-round stayed put. These days that thing would have been roped off that day and gone by the next week.
One of my long-term dreams is to have a proper merry-go-round at my house. They are nearly impossible to find these days, and the ones that are available are wicked expensive (as well as intentionally neutered so as to only spin slowly). I would drive hours and pay $1000 to buy a proper one in decent condition.
If we were bleeding a little too much, we went to the nurse lady for a bandaid. But otherwise we rinsed ourselves off in the drinking fountain, and that was it. I don’t remember anyone needing stitches, but it could have happened.
I honestly don’t know if those old merry-go-rounds at my school are still there. Probably not. Though I bet you could get it cheap!
When the Firebug was ‘playground age’ (which wasn’t that long ago; he’s 13 now), the local park had a merry-go-round that the kids played on. Next time I’m over that way, I’ll have to go in and see if it’s still there. If it is, I’ll take a pic.
Of course, the surrounding surface where one might fall wasn’t asphalt or gravel or dirt; it was one of those spongy synthetic surfaces. But I think that’s all for the good if means they can have merry-go-rounds and the like.
I would much rather have landed face-first in that rubber mat stuff than gravel, I assure you.
When I was a young radical liberal, it really would have shocked me to see all the freedoms and rights that would be given up in the liberal revolution.
Modnote: This post is off subject and political in nature. Do not repeat.
Things done in the time of my childhood that would not be allowed today?