> 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 “may” - this is hardly a gold standard study. Living in sunnier/warmer climates as a proxy for UV exposure as opposed to lifestyle differences afforded by such a climate, regional culture differences, etc. makes all of this very dubious to me.
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.
elif 24 minutes ago [-]
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.
Earw0rm 17 minutes ago [-]
Bear in mind that this study is about the UK, and London is on the same latitude as Calgary, give or take.
The sun does get strong enough to burn here, but not for much of the year - especially considering the relatively high % cloud cover (not Seattle high maybe, but high). Skin cancer cases here are AFAIK most commonly related to overseas travel or people with outdoor lifestyles in the southwest of the country.
cameronh90 6 minutes ago [-]
> but not for much of the year
Speak for yourself. Thanks to my Celtic genetics, I get sunburnt if I put my phone brightness too high. ;)
DennisP 2 hours ago [-]
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 dermatology appointments.
lurking_swe 51 minutes ago [-]
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.
If it’s around mid-day and/or the UV index is higher, say 4+, then i 100% agree with you that it’s prudent to apply sunscreen.
jnsie 28 minutes ago [-]
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.
tsoukase 1 hours ago [-]
The helper verb 'may' should accompany any scientific result as the scientific method usually cannot prove causations but only negate the null hypothesis.
TZubiri 54 minutes ago [-]
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 time, I don't need to read a "The Economist" article with a clickbaity, possibly misrepresented title of a nuanced meta-analysis.
The proof is on this comment, it's never enough data, the conclusion is always that you need more funding:
>360,000 light-skinned Brits
>Emphasis on “may” - this is hardly a gold standard study
I didn't even need 1 subject, you need more than 360,000. You are out there running kubernetes for a blog and asking for more EC2 instances on top of a 3M$ bill, I'm out here running the whole company on 2 raspberry pis.
If wealth can be achieved by increasing resources or reducing necessities, I have achieved the nirvana of wisdom of the second kind while you still strive to amass more information to make a decision:
Sun good
bobthepanda 30 minutes ago [-]
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.
tejohnso 2 hours ago [-]
"The big picture is that the benefits of sunlight outweigh the risks—provided you don’t get sunburnt,” argues Richard Weller, a dermatologist at the University of Edinburg
Also, Dr. Roger Seheult has some strong opinions on this as well. Considers sun exposure one of the pillars of health and avoiding the sun to be as dangerous as smoking.
spullara 3 hours ago [-]
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.
gaoshan 2 hours ago [-]
Make sure your sunscreen is free from things like benzene* or you may just be trading one cancer causer for another.
That's the thing about population level trends: there's always going to be individuals with counterexamples.
DennisP 2 hours ago [-]
They did say to avoid getting sunburn, which is the main cause of melanoma.
calebm 15 hours ago [-]
I am very white, but getting sun feels very healthy for my skin. Obviously I don't want to get burned bad, but good sun exposure helps my skin feel softer and less inflamed. My grandfather also spent most of his days out in the sun gardening, and my mom was just commenting a few months ago about how surprisingly smooth his skin is (and he's 92).
asdff 3 hours ago [-]
Grandfather was southern european but spent so much time in the garden he looked middle eastern. Never any sunscreen as he didn't burn. He wouldn't even feel bee stings. He did not visibly age from his 70s into his mid 90s when he passed, aside from getting quite skinny in those last years.
2 hours ago [-]
trallnag 14 hours ago [-]
And then another person (of North European ancestry looks) like a brown leatherbag at 50. Anecdotal evidence is sadly not worth a lot.
anonzzzies 13 hours ago [-]
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.
ndsipa_pomu 7 hours ago [-]
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.
cisasteelersfan 2 hours ago [-]
What's interesting is that sun exposure through a car window removes almost all UVB rays and most UVA rays. So it's closer to comparing lower sun exposure vs sun exposure with sunscreen.
setopt 1 hours ago [-]
If I recall correctly, the side windows on cars let through more UVA, while the front windows block both efficiently.
Ekaros 14 hours ago [-]
Some pictures of truck drivers are also good counter examples. The side with more exposure tend to look older.
trhway 14 hours ago [-]
>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:
"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 stabilizing the progression of keratoconic eyes.
...
The eyes were saturated with riboflavin solution and were subjected for 30 min under UV-A light
...
Cross-linking was safe and an effective therapeutical option for progressive keratoconus."
I think that this is probably one of the reasons why suntanned skin usually looks like it is in better condition mechanically-wise.
Another my favorite Sun exposure related correlation - vitamin D deficiency and autism, as 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.
And my favorite pet theory is that Neanderthals with their large eyes adapted to the Northern latitudes were significantly impaired by spike of UV radiation - getting highly increased rate of early cataract and other eyesight damage - during that thousand years of magnetic field polar swap 40K years ago, and that caused them to lose to the Cro-Magnon who was coming out of Africa with more dark and smaller eyes more adapted to higher UV levels which are natural to Africa.
EvanAnderson 2 hours ago [-]
> They did experiments by repairing cornea that way:
As a person w/ keratoconus I have read a fair bit about this treatment, corneal collagen crosslinking with riboflavin (C3R).
It does not repair the damage caused by keratoconus. It stabilizes the cornea and slows or halts progression. The collagen in the cornea naturally crosslinks (likely due to UV exposure) over our lives. My our late 30s our corneas are stable. For someone with keratoconus, where the cornea becomes progressively misshapen, stabilizing the tissue with UV (enhanced by riboflavin) slows or prevents further damage.
I was just a few years too early in my diagnosis to benefit from C3R. My eyes have been stable for the last 10 - 12 years. I wish I could have had C3R when my condition was first diagnosed back in my 20s.
trhway 2 hours ago [-]
Yes, i see what you're saying. I'm just a layman here, so i talking only based on my recollection of what i read somewhere somewhen. I think i also read another study where there were scratches or some other damage and they did it similar to pothole filling by applying solution/mix of collagen with vitamin B and curing with UV.
calebm 15 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
jraby3 3 hours ago [-]
I don't think it's at all healthy to look directly at the sun.
But I have noticed that my eyes get weaker after spending a lot of time indoors, like if I'm sick. Getting enough time in sunlight seems to be heavily correlated with better eyesight, both in my personal experience fighting farsightedness as a man in his 50s and with studies done on children regarding nearsightedness.
calebm 4 hours ago [-]
So just to clarify - yes, I do think looking at the sun directly for very short periods is good (especially if it's lower on the horizon). But overall, what I as trying to get at is that being outside and getting the bright light of the sun on your eyes is helpful. The best way to do this is on the water. When you look at the sun reflecting off the water, you are getting the bright light, but because the water is reflecting it, and the waves are constantly changing the angles, the sun like gets spread evenly over your eyes.
For the naysayers, if looking at the sun is so bad, why is it not considered bad to look at the sun's reflection on the water? Additionally, when the sun is low, if you look at the brightness of the sunlight, it is less bright than some artificial light sources, and doesn't hurt to look at. How could this be bad?
Arainach 3 hours ago [-]
>why is it not considered bad to look at the sun's reflection on the water?
Who said it's not? It may hurt you as fast but it's still bad for you.
Good point. It's all about balance though. People have been riding on boats on water for a long long time (most of it without the invention of sunglasses). And similar to the truck drivers who drive hours with one side exposed, or people who sunbathe a bunch - that is unbalanced. Staring at the sun at full brightness would be unbalanced. But I think never looking at it is also unbalanced. You can look at it, but keep your eyes moving - don't focus and stare at it for seconds (unless it's really low on the horizon, and then I think it is okay to stare at the sun).
htek 3 hours ago [-]
IIRC, reflection of the sun off water is 5% when directly overhead to about 65% when at a glancing angle (low on the horizon). I prefer to close my eyes and aim my face at the sun for about 10 minutes a day if I'm working indoors all day plus whatever incidental sunlight I get. I have SAD during the winter months and use a full-spectrum lamp, then.
People who spend more time in the sun have a low-moderate risk of melanoma, but higher risk of other skin cancers, vs those who spend more time indoors having a lower risk of non-melanoma skin cancer and a moderate-higher risk of melanoma cancer.
avian 14 hours ago [-]
Recently I've received an email from my eye specialist addressed to all her patients urging people not to look at the sun. At the same time I've also seen a similar public warning published in local media.
Apparently there has been an sharp rise in people coming in with retinal damage from staring at the sun. They didn't go into details why someone would do that, but reading this on HN I can start to guess.
codr7 14 hours ago [-]
Until I see some definite proof, I'm going to put this in the FUD box.
There's seems to be a concerted effort at making people afraid of the sun. My guess is because the sun fixes a lot of problems, and problems mean profit.
Seriously, take a step back. If spending time in / looking at the sun was dangerous we wouldn't be here.
mikestew 3 hours ago [-]
My guess is because the sun fixes a lot of problems, and problems mean profit.
And there ya go, the rallying cry of every conspiracy theorist: "They don't want you to know, because money!"
Seriously, take a step back.
Yeah, seriously.
quaintdev 15 hours ago [-]
Anyone thinking of doing this, don't. There's a reason we don't directly look at solar eclipse. Here's a excerpt from [1]
> Usually we close our eyes in reflex due to intense light from the Sun, but on day of an eclipse, the intensity of sunlight is decreased and we can view the Sun through naked eyes. While we watch a solar eclipse without any protection to our eyes, the ultraviolet rays penetrate our eyes and cause retinal burn, leading to loss of central vision.
The comment above you said nothing about a solar eclipse
Arainach 14 hours ago [-]
In a Solar Eclipse you're getting a tiny fraction of the sun's energy and it is still enough to very quickly cause long-term physical damage to your eyes. Looking at the sun during not an eclipse is even worse.
esseph 13 hours ago [-]
Where the fuck are these people coming from???
Arainach 3 hours ago [-]
We are truly in the dumbest timeline.
codr7 14 hours ago [-]
So suddenly during an eclipse, your eyes have no idea what's painful/harmful anymore? Trust your experience, it's the closest you're ever going to get to truth.
bob1029 15 hours ago [-]
I've found the same with direct sunlight exposure. My distance vision is much sharper if I've been outside a lot recently. It seems similar to how exercise works elsewhere in the body. You can definitely get a neuromuscular reaction if the incident angle of the sunlight is direct enough. The trick (as with all forms of exercise) is moderation.
harperlee 14 hours ago [-]
Might it be that when outside you tend to look farther than when inside? So distance vision gets used more and body adapts. Similar to how kids that spend time outside are less shortsighted.
amanaplanacanal 3 hours ago [-]
I'm fairly certain I saw an article recently on HN that claimed it was not the distance focusing which helped but just the exposure to brighter light.
Also, bright light will help the eye to focus. It's the same principle as if you were using a camera with a small aperture (and larger DOF, keeping more things in focus).
I would guess it's dangerous nonsense, though there are plausible claims that shortsightedness is associated with not spending much time outside as a child so perhaps there's a slight link with something that isn't nonsense.
spacechild1 13 hours ago [-]
> there are plausible claims that shortsightedness is associated with not spending much time outside as a child
AFAIK that has nothing to do with the sun but rather with looking at things at a larger distance than at home.
An obvious thing perhaps worth mentioning: if you're shortsighted (or longsighted) then you see better in bright sunlight because the iris closes, giving you greater depth of field, so that might make people think/feel that sunlight "cures" myopia.
(On the other hand, if you have excellent eyesight then you see better in less bright conditions because your vision is being limited by diffraction at the aperture.)
herbst 14 hours ago [-]
Is this some kind of weird meta joke or are people actually arguing about staring into the sun in 2025?
esseph 13 hours ago [-]
An age of unenlightenment!
blooalien 12 hours ago [-]
> 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!"
Nevermark 3 hours ago [-]
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.
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, it turns out that a minute at a time, sporadically but regularly, is enough to train the skin to be somewhat tan all the time. Presumably with far less skin damage than longer more random sun exposures, or typical duration salon sessions.
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.
There is nothing subjective about the mental benefits of the lights. I am far more alert during the day, and sleep better at night, even in summer. Rationale: We were meant to live outside.
I have worked at home my whole career, so I tune things.
I also enjoy the real sun!
ToDougie 2 hours ago [-]
> 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 what it would even look like. But I am interested in feeling better while stuck indoors all day.
His other writing is great too, but much more philosophical which may or may not be your cup of tea.
jrpt 2 hours ago [-]
I 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?
setopt 1 hours ago [-]
There are other benefits as well. For example, some eye exposure to violet or ultraviolet light have been shown to reduce myopia, which might be one reason why glasses usage has increased a lot. (Screen usage is a big myopia factor as well, but it’s not the whole story.)
There are also studies suggesting that low-level UV exposure lowers risk of death by more than what can be explained by serum vitamin D levels alone, suggesting other unknown mechanisms at play.
cma 58 minutes ago [-]
Make sure the studies control for people bed bound for long times in the hospital or in home care, they are magnitudes more likely to die early and don't get as much sun as people doing sports etc. but the sun isn't likely to be the primary factor.
If they claim causation in the paper it is usually controlled for, if they just claim a link it might not be.
anthonj 10 hours ago [-]
Isn't skin cancer 100% survivable if caught on time*, with the removal procedure begin a single 1-2 hour specialist visit?
Where "on time" means during the trivial yearly screening that everyone should be getting.
NaomiLehman 6 hours ago [-]
If you get melanoma, it can progress within weeks or months to stage >1. An annual checkup is not enough. And then you get 50% chance if you qualify for gene therapy or die.
joseakle 3 hours ago [-]
What is the recommended screening frequency ?
sigmoid10 2 hours ago [-]
That highly depends on the individual and their risk profile. But the best approach in general is to be aware of the signs that are up on these posters you see in every good dermatologist's office. Then you can spot abnormalities immediately and get them checked out professionally. Half of all melanomas are not found by screenings and are self-detected instead.
Between 2015 and 2021, Americans diagnosed with invasive[0] melanoma had a 94.7% net 5-year survival rate[1]. That means, if all other causes of death were impossible, an estimated 5.3% of those patients would have died of melanoma.
That's a pretty good net survival rate [3], but it's not perfect. And it's possible that less care in avoiding excessive sun exposure could lead to any cancers being more aggressive. However, I don't have a reference for that musing, so feel free to ignore it.
[0]: Invasive means the tumor has left the tissue it started in.
[2]: It would be higher if the official method for calculating net survival didn't, in my opinion, needlessly bias itself against cancer patient survival. The last time I reviewed the methodology notes, they compared daily hazards of death between cancer patients and everyone else. But, if the cancer patients had a lower hazard for a day, the difference was treated as zero instead of negative. This is a hill I'll die on, because their method pretends any confounding variables not in the model have no effect. Patients who catch melanoma early are probably less likely to die soon compared to those of similar age, race, sex, and location. An early diagnosis likely means they care enough about their health to visit doctors regularly and make good use of those visits.
pinkmuffinere 14 hours ago [-]
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-are-bad? Or is it really just a case-by-case examination?
usef- 13 hours ago [-]
The things you mention are sudden extremes: famine (extreme hunger), extreme temperature, being hit by a disease. The highest skin cancer group seems to be those that get sporadic extremes of sun (eg. the indoor office worker that burns on the weekend). That kind of rapid change in sunshine quantity was tough to ever do naturally. Even if you could hide from the sun in (rare) caves in the middle of summer it would be for hours not weeks. It wasn't something done normally in life.
I do think we also have observation on our side here, as it has been seen for a long time that people with outdoor occupations have lower skin cancer rates than indoor (eg "Occupational sunlight exposure and melanoma in the U.S. Navy", 1990). Why those stories never broke through to the mainstream is an interesting question.
(I know they're out of fashion now, but the paleo community was talking about doing ~10 minutes of direct sun a day almost two decades ago, with strict guidance to avoid burning, roughly based on the above reasons)
jerlam 3 hours ago [-]
> Why those stories never broke through to the mainstream is an interesting question.
The mainstream media in the US has never been great at communicating any story with nuance or depth. In the 80s and 90s, foods that we've eaten forever were being demonized, like eggs. In 2020, people were being told they shouldn't go outside lest they come within 100 feet of another person.
To their credit, the general population has never had a shorter attention span and so easily hoodwinked into believing misleading claims.
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.
brightball 3 hours ago [-]
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.
anthomtb 7 minutes ago [-]
> skeptical of slathering something all over my body just to go outside
Missing nuance: Outside for how long? And how strong is the sun?
Even with my pasty Northern European complexion, I'm skipping the sunscreen for a 20 minute walk to lunch in November. But for a 10 hour hike above treeline in July? I'll be re-applying every two hours.
Earw0rm 9 minutes ago [-]
White people - depending on your definition, I mean pale-skinned Northern Europeans - are adapted to live north of about 45 degrees.
Obviously they live lots of other places now, but evolution is slow to catch up.
If you drive through France for a day, you can literally see the change from north to south, "could be Dutch" in the far north to "could be Spanish" in the south. Of course lots of people move around but I'm talking about averages.
pitpatagain 3 hours ago [-]
People didn't used to expose themselves to as much direct sun and covered themselves with a lot more clothes. Traditional clothing in arid sunny areas typically covers everything, look at people in the middle east today.
I live in a very sunny desert area and it's kind of funny when people assume people from here would be "more tanned". We stay in the shade, the sun will kill you! Anyone working outside is wearing wide brimmed hats and typically has all of their skin covered with clothing even in the heat, people typically have their faces covered with cloth as well.
Spending time outside with minimal clothing in direct midday sun is a modern weird behavior.
whatevertrevor 14 minutes ago [-]
Yup, I grew up in a hot subtropical climate and the best counter to the summer was to stay indoors, hydrate. If you have to be outdoors, stay in the shade, if you have to be exposed to the sun, cover yourself. All of the benefits you get from being in direct sunlight can be gained with just being outdoors in shaded areas, maybe for a slightly longer time.
The way western culture glorifies direct exposure to the sun is always hilarious to me, everyone lining up to burn their skin for hours on end to "catch up" on sunlight exposure. Instead of just playing an outdoor sport under some trees or being outdoors in the morning/evening when sunlight is a lot less potent and weather is a lot more pleasant.
seemaze 2 hours ago [-]
Absolutely agree.
I'm find myself aghast when I travel to different environments and observe people laying in direct sun almost naked. Not that I think they shouldn't, it's just such a stark contrast to my norm. I'll end up with a painful sunburn if I venture outside uncovered for more than 10 minutes at home.
adrianN 3 hours ago [-]
If you ask „how did people survive“ the answer is more often than not: „with great difficulty“. Take for example simple hygiene measures like using soap or brushing your teeth or disinfecting wounds.
laserlight 3 hours ago [-]
Or, the answer is simply “they didn't survive”, which is the case for countless babies who died because an activity as simple as hand-washing wasn't known to be a matter of life and death.
datadrivenangel 3 hours ago [-]
Teeth brushing is not as important if you're not eating modern food. Processed sugars really are terrible (but delicious)
seemaze 2 hours ago [-]
Global migration outpaced evolutionary adaption a long time ago. Many peoples have adapted to local UV conditions, but can now jump on an airplane and are instantly in a completely different environment.
Additionally, if you've ever seen a portrait of a human in the UV spectrum, you'll notice how shiny they look. I'm sure modern people have much less protective oils in their skin as a result of increased bathing required by societal and sanitation norms of modern urbanized habitation.
danielmarkbruce 51 minutes ago [-]
Many didn't. On top of that, evolution optimizes for reproduction, not long life. With few exceptions, cancer is a disease of the post child rearing aged folks.
TinkersW 3 hours ago [-]
Often living in a different climate zone, US is well south of Europe.
lstodd 3 hours ago [-]
56th latitude person can be literally baked by northern mediterannean (~42 lat) March sun in a couple of days. But a couple months later.. no problems climbing mountains all day. We are very adaptable.
TinkersW 2 hours ago [-]
You can choose to bake, and your skin will harden up and deal with it, but it will also cause long term leathery skin, which many find unattractive, and increased skin cancer risk.
Tho I agree with economist article, sun exposure is very good for you, just not high UV exposure.
AppleBananaPie 3 hours ago [-]
They survived but for a much shorter time?
throwaway74628 3 hours ago [-]
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.
Jweb_Guru 14 hours ago [-]
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.
annsjdhs 7 hours ago [-]
> 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”.
globular-toast 12 hours ago [-]
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.
amanaplanacanal 2 hours ago [-]
Where do you get the idea that we evolved as a polygamous species? The few remaining hunter-gatherer societies don't work like that. I think that kind of polygamy came with agriculture.
globular-toast 2 hours ago [-]
The existence of porn should be enough to show that we aren't monogamous. That and the fact that virtually no other mammal is including all the great apes. Monogamy is a thing in birds and they are literally dinosaurs.
amanaplanacanal 2 hours ago [-]
I think possibly we are using different definitions of polygamy. If you mean one male monopolizes the females, I disagree. If you mean that individuals (both male and female) don't mate with just one person, then I agree.
lqet 14 hours ago [-]
Every winter since I was a kid, I get Keratosis pilaris [0] on my inner upper arms, which is a bit of a nuisance. After the first day of spring sun in a T-Shirt, it disappears completely within days.
Oh, I've always thought it's just a lack of sweating causing your dead skins to grow over the pores, didn't realize that it's actually a mysterious medical condition?
manmal 14 hours ago [-]
Have you tried irradiating with near infrared light in the winter? Eg with a cheap CCTV IR light off aliexpress.
brokegrammer 2 hours ago [-]
> followed 30,000 Swedish women for 20 years. It likewise found that, even after correcting for things like age, wealth and health, sun-seeking behaviour was associated with a lower chance of death from all causes.
Is it because they got exposed to sun or is it because of the "sun-seeking behavior", which probably means more physical activity?
Either way, it's too soon to be throwing away our sunscreen.
ZaoLahma 14 hours ago [-]
As with everything, I guess do it in moderation and don't be stupid...?
Planning on being out a full day under the summer sun as a very pale north European? Slob on all the sunscreen that you can and hide in the shade when possible.
A day out in mid September / mid March when the sun is not looking to murder you? Revel in it. Soak it up. Be a plant.
surfmike 3 hours ago [-]
Also it makes a lot of difference where you are. Scandinavians rarely wear sunscreen but their UV index is much lower than, say, California, let alone Australia.
whycome 3 hours ago [-]
Also, critically, get regular sun exposure so that your skin adapts. Ideally do this before it gets intense.
ryandvm 8 hours ago [-]
Correlation versus causation and all that, but an increase in bowel cancers and a decrease in sun exposure are both well documented trends over the last few decades.
amanaplanacanal 2 hours ago [-]
They've associated low vitamin D levels and bowel cancer, but I don't know which direction causation goes. Or if it's a third factor like more exercise.
cpf_au 15 hours ago [-]
Yeah not as a pasty white guy in Australia
mcdeltat 12 hours ago [-]
Australia is exceptionally bad for the sun. It's crazy because the incidence of skin cancer is still so high even though sun protection is drilled into us since birth. I'll rant further that Australia is not even good from a UV/temperature tradeoff because the UV is always ridiculously high. Nice warm Mediterranean summer UV level is equivalent to a freezing cold winter day in Australia.
wewxjfq 13 hours ago [-]
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.
whatevertrevor 8 minutes ago [-]
I have no reliable and in-depth data on how many of my ancestors died of skin cancer, or how many hours they exposed themselves to sunlight, and what kind of sunlight, or what clothes they wore over those thousands of years.
Using this line of thinking is at best an attempt at rationalizing what lifestyle you wanted to live anyway.
mcdeltat 12 hours ago [-]
> 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.
TheCoelacanth 7 hours ago [-]
Melanin helps protect from DNA damage by absorbing much of the UV radiation. As you get more exposure to sunlight, your skin produces more melanin resulting in more protection.
oasisaimlessly 7 hours ago [-]
Is this a joke? Yes, it's called 'tanning'.
Having more melanin decreases the effective dose because any photon that melanin absorbs isn't going to be absorbed by your DNA.
ponchel 15 hours ago [-]
Who actually thought that getting sunlight was bad ?
tforcram 15 hours ago [-]
I've had a malignant melanoma, my mother and extended relatives had it as well (including a great uncle I never met who died from it), 4 (of my 9) siblings have had multiple, mostly those of use who have red hair/fair skin. I don't think I've ever heard of a greater risk of skin cancer due to genetics/familial occurrence than I have.
After my mother got it and had a huge chunk taken out of her leg when I was very young, we have had it drilled into our heads that the sun was going to kill us and we needed to cover up and lather in sun screen for even the slightest possibility of sun exposure.
Obviously that didn't help much as many of us still got it anyway, hah!
But yea there are some folks who are terrified of the sun. I personally think 15-20 minutes unfiltered sunlight is good for me, but beyond that I'm looking for the nearest shade or trying to cover up.
thrawa8387336 14 hours ago [-]
What I've heard is people who don't get sun frequently, are at higher risk of melanoma. Like no sun then sunburn = bad bad
amanaplanacanal 2 hours ago [-]
There is also the evidence that it usually doesn't happen on the hands or face which are chronically exposed, but rather areas that are normally covered.
EZ-E 14 hours ago [-]
It is a big thing in Asia to avoid sunlight to avoid premature aging and tanning.
It's an interesting parallel you can observe in parks: in my country in Europe, people will prefer to sit on the benches exposed to the sun first, in China and Korea, people will sit in the shade instead.
seanicus 2 hours ago [-]
Lived in SE Asia fora few years and my understanding is that tan skin = outdoor labor = lower caste.
My spouse is asian and I'm N Euro - I would kill to have skin that just tans no matter how much sun you get. I think I've seen her get burns twice in over a decade and we do a lot of beach time.
amanaplanacanal 2 hours ago [-]
The West used to have the same association. Now it's reversed, only people with lots of leisure time get to have a tan.
uncircle 15 hours ago [-]
There is a lot of weird discussion on English-speaking forums that you should always always wear sunscreen, even if the day is grey, because skin cancer is a constant risk.
I do not get if it’s a massive and long-running marketing campaign that has brainwashed the entire population, if it’s because many living in US and UK have a very white skin tone thus burn easily, or what else. Skin cancer is a fact of life, but 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.
By all means use sunscreen if you have to spend a lot of time in the sun and risk a very unpleasant sunburn, but I wish someone would explain the Anglo obsession with daily sunscreen routine.
saltcured 1 hours ago [-]
Where the medical establishment pushes it, it is largely about establishing habits for people who may get a lot of exposure that they didn't plan for.
Also, local climates differ dramatically. A couple of my worst sunburns in my life were on extremely gray days on the California coast. It is easy to fool yourself into thinking the sun isn't strong when you don't feel the heat of it. But on those kinds of days, it's just diffuse UV blasting from every direction.
I found it instructive when I got photochromatic eye glasses. Since they are UV-activated, it is like carrying a UV detection instrument around with a heads-up display. It really helped me get a better sense for what conditions and hours of the day have significant UV in my normal daily life.
phito 15 hours ago [-]
> 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 immune system deals with it, but sometimes it misses one roge cell and you've got cancer. That's why you want to limit your exposure to mutations even if you're somewhat adapted to deal with them.
Then it's a matter of looking at studies and statistics and deciding for yourself. Personally, I'll keep putting on sunscreen, as I sunburn easily ;)
elcritch 14 hours ago [-]
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 other commenters point out how exposure improved their skin or vision.
However that natural evolved state doesn't include sitting inside all week and then going outside on the weekend and getting completely toasted sunburnt!
Doing that and getting completely sunburnt overwhelms our normal cellular repair mechanism, the immune system response, etc. It's much more likely a rogue cell evades the immune system when it's swamped with such cells.
Personally I avoid sunscreen if possible for short excursions but will use it if going to the pool as I'm indoors more these years and paler.
uncircle 11 hours ago [-]
> 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.
trallnag 14 hours ago [-]
While we may be one species, there are very obvious differences between some ethnic groups and ancestral clusters.
codr7 14 hours ago [-]
Cancer is a parasite, the sun kills parasites.
harperlee 14 hours ago [-]
Soap also kills parasites. And antibiotics!
heyheyhey 3 hours ago [-]
> I wish someone would explain the Anglo obsession with daily sunscreen routine.
Because it's more about skincare for physical attraction and less about the cancer. Sun ages your skin with wrinkles, sagging, hyperpigmentation, etc.
This isn't specific to Anglo nations too. Any country where being "fair skinned" is more desirable will have lots of demand for sunscreen.
jusssi 14 hours ago [-]
Maybe we're getting more UV now than we evolved with?
It's a small factor, but humans evolved in the tropics. Ancestral humans has very dark skin because of the tropical UV exposure. Then when some moved into Europe and Asia, selection pressure means they rapidly lost their pigmentation because they weren't getting enough vitamin D.
ehnto 15 hours ago [-]
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.
worthless-trash 14 hours ago [-]
Slip, Slop, Slap.
Grum9 9 hours ago [-]
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Krssst 3 hours ago [-]
Skin aging, skin cancer, cataract.
jokoon 14 hours ago [-]
Dermatologists and doctors
SapporoChris 15 hours ago [-]
Most East Asians: Chinese, Japanese and Koreans for a start.
ndsipa_pomu 7 hours ago [-]
Sunlight has a distinct ageing effect on skin and this is so well known that cosmetic companies can truthfully label their ointments/lotions as "anti-ageing" if they provide some sun protection effect (e.g. SPF level).
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catchcatchcatch 20 minutes ago [-]
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stefantalpalaru 3 hours ago [-]
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peoplefromibiza 14 hours ago [-]
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fbn79 3 hours ago [-]
I never realized how much solar radiation can be dangerous until I read Andy Weir's Hail Mary.
Emphasis on “may” - this is hardly a gold standard study. Living in sunnier/warmer climates as a proxy for UV exposure as opposed to lifestyle differences afforded by such a climate, regional culture differences, etc. makes all of this very dubious to me.
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.
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.
The sun does get strong enough to burn here, but not for much of the year - especially considering the relatively high % cloud cover (not Seattle high maybe, but high). Skin cancer cases here are AFAIK most commonly related to overseas travel or people with outdoor lifestyles in the southwest of the country.
Speak for yourself. Thanks to my Celtic genetics, I get sunburnt if I put my phone brightness too high. ;)
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 dermatology appointments.
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.
If it’s around mid-day and/or the UV index is higher, say 4+, then i 100% agree with you that it’s prudent to apply sunscreen.
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 time, I don't need to read a "The Economist" article with a clickbaity, possibly misrepresented title of a nuanced meta-analysis.
The proof is on this comment, it's never enough data, the conclusion is always that you need more funding:
>360,000 light-skinned Brits
>Emphasis on “may” - this is hardly a gold standard study
I didn't even need 1 subject, you need more than 360,000. You are out there running kubernetes for a blog and asking for more EC2 instances on top of a 3M$ bill, I'm out here running the whole company on 2 raspberry pis.
If wealth can be achieved by increasing resources or reducing necessities, I have achieved the nirvana of wisdom of the second kind while you still strive to amass more information to make a decision:
Sun good
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.
Also, Dr. Roger Seheult has some strong opinions on this as well. Considers sun exposure one of the pillars of health and avoiding the sun to be as dangerous as smoking.
* https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/is-sunscreen-safe
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 stabilizing the progression of keratoconic eyes.
...
The eyes were saturated with riboflavin solution and were subjected for 30 min under UV-A light
...
Cross-linking was safe and an effective therapeutical option for progressive keratoconus."
I think that this is probably one of the reasons why suntanned skin usually looks like it is in better condition mechanically-wise.
Another my favorite Sun exposure related correlation - vitamin D deficiency and autism, as 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.
And my favorite pet theory is that Neanderthals with their large eyes adapted to the Northern latitudes were significantly impaired by spike of UV radiation - getting highly increased rate of early cataract and other eyesight damage - during that thousand years of magnetic field polar swap 40K years ago, and that caused them to lose to the Cro-Magnon who was coming out of Africa with more dark and smaller eyes more adapted to higher UV levels which are natural to Africa.
As a person w/ keratoconus I have read a fair bit about this treatment, corneal collagen crosslinking with riboflavin (C3R).
It does not repair the damage caused by keratoconus. It stabilizes the cornea and slows or halts progression. The collagen in the cornea naturally crosslinks (likely due to UV exposure) over our lives. My our late 30s our corneas are stable. For someone with keratoconus, where the cornea becomes progressively misshapen, stabilizing the tissue with UV (enhanced by riboflavin) slows or prevents further damage.
I was just a few years too early in my diagnosis to benefit from C3R. My eyes have been stable for the last 10 - 12 years. I wish I could have had C3R when my condition was first diagnosed back in my 20s.
But I have noticed that my eyes get weaker after spending a lot of time indoors, like if I'm sick. Getting enough time in sunlight seems to be heavily correlated with better eyesight, both in my personal experience fighting farsightedness as a man in his 50s and with studies done on children regarding nearsightedness.
For the naysayers, if looking at the sun is so bad, why is it not considered bad to look at the sun's reflection on the water? Additionally, when the sun is low, if you look at the brightness of the sunlight, it is less bright than some artificial light sources, and doesn't hurt to look at. How could this be bad?
Who said it's not? It may hurt you as fast but it's still bad for you.
https://www.aao.org/eye-health/diseases/photokeratitis-snow-...
People who spend more time in the sun have a low-moderate risk of melanoma, but higher risk of other skin cancers, vs those who spend more time indoors having a lower risk of non-melanoma skin cancer and a moderate-higher risk of melanoma cancer.
Apparently there has been an sharp rise in people coming in with retinal damage from staring at the sun. They didn't go into details why someone would do that, but reading this on HN I can start to guess.
There's seems to be a concerted effort at making people afraid of the sun. My guess is because the sun fixes a lot of problems, and problems mean profit.
Seriously, take a step back. If spending time in / looking at the sun was dangerous we wouldn't be here.
And there ya go, the rallying cry of every conspiracy theorist: "They don't want you to know, because money!"
Seriously, take a step back.
Yeah, seriously.
> Usually we close our eyes in reflex due to intense light from the Sun, but on day of an eclipse, the intensity of sunlight is decreased and we can view the Sun through naked eyes. While we watch a solar eclipse without any protection to our eyes, the ultraviolet rays penetrate our eyes and cause retinal burn, leading to loss of central vision.
[1]: https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/partial-solar-eclips...
Edit: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31722876/
Aldous Huxley was taken in, unfortunately: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Seeing
I would guess it's dangerous nonsense, though there are plausible claims that shortsightedness is associated with not spending much time outside as a child so perhaps there's a slight link with something that isn't nonsense.
AFAIK that has nothing to do with the sun but rather with looking at things at a larger distance than at home.
An obvious thing perhaps worth mentioning: if you're shortsighted (or longsighted) then you see better in bright sunlight because the iris closes, giving you greater depth of field, so that might make people think/feel that sunlight "cures" myopia.
(On the other hand, if you have excellent eyesight then you see better in less bright conditions because your vision is being limited by diffraction at the aperture.)
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!"
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, it turns out that a minute at a time, sporadically but regularly, is enough to train the skin to be somewhat tan all the time. Presumably with far less skin damage than longer more random sun exposures, or typical duration salon sessions.
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.
There is nothing subjective about the mental benefits of the lights. I am far more alert during the day, and sleep better at night, even in summer. Rationale: We were meant to live outside.
I have worked at home my whole career, so I tune things.
I also enjoy the real sun!
I am intrigued -- please can you share any publicly available image of this solution? I'm not sure what to google search, or what it would even look like. But I am interested in feeling better while stuck indoors all day.
https://meaningness.com/sad-light-lumens
His other writing is great too, but much more philosophical which may or may not be your cup of tea.
There are also studies suggesting that low-level UV exposure lowers risk of death by more than what can be explained by serum vitamin D levels alone, suggesting other unknown mechanisms at play.
If they claim causation in the paper it is usually controlled for, if they just claim a link it might not be.
Where "on time" means during the trivial yearly screening that everyone should be getting.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/cancer/screening-advice-thats...
That's a pretty good net survival rate [3], but it's not perfect. And it's possible that less care in avoiding excessive sun exposure could lead to any cancers being more aggressive. However, I don't have a reference for that musing, so feel free to ignore it.
[0]: Invasive means the tumor has left the tissue it started in.
[1]: https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/melan.html
[2]: It would be higher if the official method for calculating net survival didn't, in my opinion, needlessly bias itself against cancer patient survival. The last time I reviewed the methodology notes, they compared daily hazards of death between cancer patients and everyone else. But, if the cancer patients had a lower hazard for a day, the difference was treated as zero instead of negative. This is a hill I'll die on, because their method pretends any confounding variables not in the model have no effect. Patients who catch melanoma early are probably less likely to die soon compared to those of similar age, race, sex, and location. An early diagnosis likely means they care enough about their health to visit doctors regularly and make good use of those visits.
I do think we also have observation on our side here, as it has been seen for a long time that people with outdoor occupations have lower skin cancer rates than indoor (eg "Occupational sunlight exposure and melanoma in the U.S. Navy", 1990). Why those stories never broke through to the mainstream is an interesting question.
(I know they're out of fashion now, but the paleo community was talking about doing ~10 minutes of direct sun a day almost two decades ago, with strict guidance to avoid burning, roughly based on the above reasons)
The mainstream media in the US has never been great at communicating any story with nuance or depth. In the 80s and 90s, foods that we've eaten forever were being demonized, like eggs. In 2020, people were being told they shouldn't go outside lest they come within 100 feet of another person.
To their credit, the general population has never had a shorter attention span and so easily hoodwinked into believing misleading claims.
Australia's sun recommendations for people of differing skin types is not bad: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/tailored-protection-aust...
Missing nuance: Outside for how long? And how strong is the sun?
Even with my pasty Northern European complexion, I'm skipping the sunscreen for a 20 minute walk to lunch in November. But for a 10 hour hike above treeline in July? I'll be re-applying every two hours.
Obviously they live lots of other places now, but evolution is slow to catch up.
If you drive through France for a day, you can literally see the change from north to south, "could be Dutch" in the far north to "could be Spanish" in the south. Of course lots of people move around but I'm talking about averages.
I live in a very sunny desert area and it's kind of funny when people assume people from here would be "more tanned". We stay in the shade, the sun will kill you! Anyone working outside is wearing wide brimmed hats and typically has all of their skin covered with clothing even in the heat, people typically have their faces covered with cloth as well.
Spending time outside with minimal clothing in direct midday sun is a modern weird behavior.
The way western culture glorifies direct exposure to the sun is always hilarious to me, everyone lining up to burn their skin for hours on end to "catch up" on sunlight exposure. Instead of just playing an outdoor sport under some trees or being outdoors in the morning/evening when sunlight is a lot less potent and weather is a lot more pleasant.
I'm find myself aghast when I travel to different environments and observe people laying in direct sun almost naked. Not that I think they shouldn't, it's just such a stark contrast to my norm. I'll end up with a painful sunburn if I venture outside uncovered for more than 10 minutes at home.
Additionally, if you've ever seen a portrait of a human in the UV spectrum, you'll notice how shiny they look. I'm sure modern people have much less protective oils in their skin as a result of increased bathing required by societal and sanitation norms of modern urbanized habitation.
Tho I agree with economist article, sun exposure is very good for you, just not high UV exposure.
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”.
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.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keratosis_pilaris
Is it because they got exposed to sun or is it because of the "sun-seeking behavior", which probably means more physical activity?
Either way, it's too soon to be throwing away our sunscreen.
Planning on being out a full day under the summer sun as a very pale north European? Slob on all the sunscreen that you can and hide in the shade when possible.
A day out in mid September / mid March when the sun is not looking to murder you? Revel in it. Soak it up. Be a plant.
Using this line of thinking is at best an attempt at rationalizing what lifestyle you wanted to live anyway.
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.
Having more melanin decreases the effective dose because any photon that melanin absorbs isn't going to be absorbed by your DNA.
After my mother got it and had a huge chunk taken out of her leg when I was very young, we have had it drilled into our heads that the sun was going to kill us and we needed to cover up and lather in sun screen for even the slightest possibility of sun exposure.
Obviously that didn't help much as many of us still got it anyway, hah!
But yea there are some folks who are terrified of the sun. I personally think 15-20 minutes unfiltered sunlight is good for me, but beyond that I'm looking for the nearest shade or trying to cover up.
My spouse is asian and I'm N Euro - I would kill to have skin that just tans no matter how much sun you get. I think I've seen her get burns twice in over a decade and we do a lot of beach time.
I do not get if it’s a massive and long-running marketing campaign that has brainwashed the entire population, if it’s because many living in US and UK have a very white skin tone thus burn easily, or what else. Skin cancer is a fact of life, but 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.
By all means use sunscreen if you have to spend a lot of time in the sun and risk a very unpleasant sunburn, but I wish someone would explain the Anglo obsession with daily sunscreen routine.
Also, local climates differ dramatically. A couple of my worst sunburns in my life were on extremely gray days on the California coast. It is easy to fool yourself into thinking the sun isn't strong when you don't feel the heat of it. But on those kinds of days, it's just diffuse UV blasting from every direction.
I found it instructive when I got photochromatic eye glasses. Since they are UV-activated, it is like carrying a UV detection instrument around with a heads-up display. It really helped me get a better sense for what conditions and hours of the day have significant UV in my normal daily life.
Yeah, most of the time our immune system deals with it, but sometimes it misses one roge cell and you've got cancer. That's why you want to limit your exposure to mutations even if you're somewhat adapted to deal with them.
Then it's a matter of looking at studies and statistics and deciding for yourself. Personally, I'll keep putting on sunscreen, as I sunburn easily ;)
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 other commenters point out how exposure improved their skin or vision.
However that natural evolved state doesn't include sitting inside all week and then going outside on the weekend and getting completely toasted sunburnt!
Doing that and getting completely sunburnt overwhelms our normal cellular repair mechanism, the immune system response, etc. It's much more likely a rogue cell evades the immune system when it's swamped with such cells.
Personally I avoid sunscreen if possible for short excursions but will use it if going to the pool as I'm indoors more these years and paler.
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.
Because it's more about skincare for physical attraction and less about the cancer. Sun ages your skin with wrinkles, sagging, hyperpigmentation, etc.
This isn't specific to Anglo nations too. Any country where being "fair skinned" is more desirable will have lots of demand for sunscreen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion