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).
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).
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.
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.
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?
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.
The ozone layer wasn't as weak as it is now. We receive more radiation from the sun at the surface than we did before CFCs.
In the past, people, in general, remained in the general vicinity of where they were born. Different skin types adapted to different amounts of sunlight.
We also didn't have the knowledge to link death and disease with their actual causes.
That said, in the past, people used variety of materials for sunscreen without the knowledge that "too much radiation bad". Mud/clay/etc seems to be something multiple cultures over time used. In cultures where working in the sun is common, wearing long clothes that blocks the sun is also a thing, and works like sunscreen.
Given that last point, I think baking in the sun while nearly naked to the point of developing disease is a relatively recent cultural thing, but that's just a guess.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
"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.
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?
I wish there was anything we could do about "x may y" "studies" where it's just a grad student finding 2 weakly correlated variables in an existing dataset and hitting publish. Maybe experimental studies can be called science and observational studies can be called schmience. Of course that is a terrible solution, but god I wish something could be done.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 78.7 ms ] thread[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keratosis_pilaris
In the past, people, in general, remained in the general vicinity of where they were born. Different skin types adapted to different amounts of sunlight.
We also didn't have the knowledge to link death and disease with their actual causes.
That said, in the past, people used variety of materials for sunscreen without the knowledge that "too much radiation bad". Mud/clay/etc seems to be something multiple cultures over time used. In cultures where working in the sun is common, wearing long clothes that blocks the sun is also a thing, and works like sunscreen.
Given that last point, I think baking in the sun while nearly naked to the point of developing disease is a relatively recent cultural thing, but that's just a guess.
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.
Where "on time" means during the trivial yearly screening that everyone should be getting.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
How about not making any public messaging so black and white. B&W messaging leads to polarised ideas on healthcare and everything else...
</rant>