This always strikes me as a tough discussion. With the odd hostility between the two extremes of "all sun is bad exposure" and "you should get more sun." With the later taken to be "all sun is good exposure."
Just observing a typical yard, it is easy to see that grass can both have too much and too little sun. Indeed, cover it up and it will die. Expose it to direct sun all day for several days with no water and it will similarly die. (Well, not similarly, it will die in a different way.)
I realize we don't photosynthesize, and burning is clearly bad for us. But I don't understand why people seem so resistant to the idea that some sun is probably beneficial.
I also realize that literally "basking in the sun" is almost certainly taking it too far. :(
> But I don't understand why people seem so resistant to the idea that some sun is probably beneficial.
The sun ages your skin. It makes you look older. I've known people in their 40's who have avoided sun who look like they're in their late 20's. Their skin is supple, has few wrinkles, and generally looks healthy. My friend is my age, his wife is 10 years older than he. She legitimately looks a good 10 years younger than him thanks to intentionally avoiding the sun throughout her life.
I, in contrast, look my age (40's as well), because I've spent a reasonable amount of my life outside. Chores, being raised with an attitude of "don't come back inside until dinnertime", and swimming competitively in the summer. My skin doesn't heal as well, it's less supple (sub-skin features show through more harshly than they used to), and I have a fair share of wrinkles around my eyes and corners of my mouth (charitably referred to as laugh lines).
And then there's the extreme sunbathers and outdoor laborers who look like they're in their 70's at 40; who have already had potential cancerous spots on their skin removed.
It's simply one of those things where even moderate exposure can do demonstrable damage to your skin. And if not treated quickly, the cancer sun exposure causes can straight up kill you.
Finding out that it may also have positive benefits feels weird. It feels like learning that regular exposure to acid has long term health benefits.
> Finding out that it may also have positive benefits feels weird. It feels like learning that regular exposure to acid has long term health benefits.
How can that be weird? Just about everything can kill you in large quantities but some things are still good for you in the right doses. I’m pretty sure your proteins are made out of acids.
I, on the other hand, am 43 and it's not rare for people to think I'm under 30.
I was born and raised in the south of Brazil, an area that was known as one of the worst affected by the ozone layer "hole" in the 90s. I used to spend 3 months per year at the beach, under that extreme sun. The rest of the year was also very sun-rich and a lot of it spent outside. I had my skin burned many times.
I know a lot of other people who had similar upbringings and also look a lot younger than their ages.
lets use common sense a bit, humans have evolved while being in the sun, constantly, their skin darkened to protect them
as humans moved northward, the exposure to sun was so important that even their skin lost it protective pigmentation to allow more sun to reach the body
we are not even remotely close to understanding all the beneficial processes that take place when the sun hits skin
thinking that exposure to sun is like exposure to acid shows a complete disconnect from reality,
I would urge you to read up on this a lot more - you will find that people who spend time outdoors in the sun are healthier, happier, and live longer. Their outcomes when facing all kinds of cancers are far, far better.
Isn't this basically also true of exercise? Running is great for you, but it puts a strain on the cartilage in your joints which will become slower to heal and faster to harm over time. Still, most people would rather have great pulmonary health and a knee replacement by 70 than nice knees and a bad ticker.
> Isn't this basically also true of exercise? Running is great for you, but it puts a strain on the cartilage
Well, exercise and running are not synonymous. A lot of people who are very active avoid running for the reasons you mentioned, and don’t require knee replacements.
the one reliable longevity increasing action you can take across all humans is eat less calories. eating enough, but overall smaller amounts of calories, leads to longer lifespans in humans. eating too many calories leads to shorter lifespans. eating more calories than “normal,” but working out regularly so you are fit, still leads to shorter lifespans than eating less calories overall.
and yes i think most people would rather have the medium life span but a healthy one
My older parents here in the southern US are both dealing with skin cancer of various forms (melanoma and squamous cell carcinoma) because of accumulated sun exposure from when they were younger. Neither one of them were tanning fanatics/sun bunnies/whatever but they would very occasionally get mild sunburns from working outside without adequate protection.
I myself try to avoid prolonged direct exposure to the sun as a matter of principle to try and avoid having to deal with that stuff when I'm their age. If I'm going to be out in direct sunlight for a prolonged period of time, I'm going to be wearing sunscreen and a hat.
It's really hard to know where to draw the line between "too much sun" vs "no sun".
> because of accumulated sun exposure from when they were younger.
I don't think this gets enough attention.
It's anecdata, so grain of salt and all of that, but one day when I was around 8 or 10 years old, I spent essentially the entirety of a bright summer day playing on the beach near a relative's cabin. It was the longest I had ever spent continuously in the sun up until that point. No one warned me to take extended breaks in the shade, or suggested sunscreen. I don't think I even heard about sunscreen at that point. At the end of the day, almost all of my skin was bright red and extremely painful to the touch. All of the adults thought it was funny. I was in excruciating pain for the next 48 hours.
It's not that the adults (parents, aunts, uncles, etc) weren't caring, they just seemed to think that painful sunburns were just a normal summer thing. Maybe even a right of passage.
I was _much_ more careful about sun exposure after that experience.
Anyway, fast forward a couple of decades and now I have damaged skin everywhere that sunburn happened. Lots of moles on the tops of my arms, shoulders, and back (virtually none on the bottom), scar tissue from where injuries never healed properly, etc. Skin cancer is very likely in my future.
I have two kids and they whine and groan and complain when I berate them about not wearing sunscreen or taking shade breaks. Oh well.
> But I don't understand why people seem so resistant to the idea that some sun is probably beneficial.
There are some people who believe this, but Vitamin D and sun exposure have been a popular topic for a very long time now. It’s getting harder to find people who think that avoiding all sun exposure is a good idea.
The most confusing part appears to be the idea that wearing sunscreen is equivalent to avoiding UV exposure. Sunscreen reduces UV exposure, but does not completely eliminate it. This misconception has produced a lot of people who think “sunscreen bad” because “UV good”. You can get moderate UV exposure while wearing sunscreen.
But what doses did they take in the research? Vitamin D RDA has been increased by like 5-10x recently in some countries (others are still lagging behind), because the RDA that we've used for decades had a calculation error.
If the studies dosed vitamin D based on recommendations then it shouldn't be surprising that supplementing vitamin D didn't work. Considering that only a few countries have updated their vitamin D RDA in the past few years, and most haven't, then I think it's likely that most studies on the topic will have too low of a dose of vitamin D supplementation.
It's also possible that some of the health benefits don't come from vitamin D or UV exposure, but instead from something like red light exposure or some other wavelength. (Red) light therapy is a popular topic for example. It's mostly touted to improve skin aging and it's being studied as a help with myopia in children. Does it work? No idea.
Vitamines cannot be patented by pharmaceutical firms. So their supplements could be made by anyone. Also having vitamine D deficit makes you potential customer of all kind alternatives made by pharma because of your weak immunity.
Agenda against vitamine D is strong and make me sceptical everytime I hear about danger of sun exposing or how vitamine D is not working.
I wonder if it’s just correlation, with the actual cause of both being physical activity. Physical activity likely makes you go out into the sun more, and it also likely reduces mortality.
Would be great if you provided a source so we could check whether they controlled for physical activity.
One of the things I love most about HN - you think of a hypothesis, and right after you see someone else who has already posted it. Very curious about this one as well. Though I don't imagine it being the "actual cause", just a big cofactor. I'd still put some money on the direct effect of sunlight absorption by your skin in itself having additional positive benefits (in appropriate doses).
>Research on all cause mortality disagrees. Some sun exposure reduces all cause mortality even if you already take vitamin D.
Some sun exposure is correlated with lower all-cause mortality. That is a very long way from establishing causation, particularly considering all of the other plausible explanations for that correlation.
I would be very surprised if the research you’re pointing to suggests causation.
I’m not saying causation doesn’t exist. But the reason why this issue is hard to resolve is precisely because causation one way or another is hard to establish.
Causation for specific effects of Sun exposure is much easier to establish (for example skin cancer due to exposure, or lower depression due to exposure).
I mean, I want to agree with you, but it is easy to see that everyone says any tanning of your skin is indication that you have skin damage. Which, frankly, feels extremely stated to me.
Pale skin from living in a cave looks just as unhealthy as leather tan skin from all day sun exposure over years. Moderate tan from being outside, though? I have a hard time thinking it is as dangerous as stated. Feels like saying "soreness is your muscles recovering from damage and you should avoid it."
> Feels like saying "soreness is your muscles recovering from damage and you should avoid it."
Except this is an analogy not a true comparison of the systems. The act of growing muscles is due to muscle damage and regrowth (to really handwave), and that action causes soreness. It’s not cumulative damage to the muscles, ideally it should heal in between. The same experience is not true for skin. You’re not “improving the health” of your skin by being tan, and we know that damage to the skin is cumulative.
The health benefits of being in the sun seem to be a combination of mental-health (sun=happy) and chemical-release when skin is exposed to sun (eg vitamin D). This seems more like “certain side affects of sun expose are positive to the overall body, despite the growing damage to the skin”.
Agreed that it is an analogy. I'll go farther and agree that I could flat be wrong! :D
In the analogy, though, I do know people have a hard time distinguishing between pain and soreness. Such that it is not uncommon for people to exercise too hard and trigger pain, which will slow them down. As such, I expect that sun exposure is likely the same. I even agree that it is probably easier to jump over any threshold that there may be and to get too much sun. I have a hard time thinking any darkening of skin is a sign of damage, though.
I also think it is tough to distinguish between damage versus wear. Which, is probably just my not liking the language of "damage" here. Do we say that guitar players have damaged their skin to build calloused finger tips? (Genuine question.)
The skin suffers (permanent?) damage from the sun. Not wear. Not darkening. Not “kinda in pain that does away”. Damage-like-negative-connotation-damage. (Yes it also tans and wrinkles and calluses).
This damage is mostly ignored until it manifests as cancer of the skin. Then it’s too late to undo the damage, and its treat-the-cancer time. But you can use tools at dermatology offices to see the damage more clearly, and you can take action to slow the damage (eg Sunscreen). But it’s absolutely suffering damage that one day may manifest as potentially lethal cancer.
I don't want to dig out the reference, but it seemed pretty credible when I read it.
It states that while it is true that people exposed to the sun get skin cancers more often, their outcomes are also usually far better.
So are their outcomes to all other forms of cancer. Thus, overall, the benefits are substantial.
This is not to say you should go out and lay in the sun for hours and get your skin dark brown - instead, it is about not being afraid of normal and regular sun exposure. It is good for you.
Things that mildly damage cells are not necessarily bad for you. They trigger apoptosis, a renewal of these cells. This is why fasting is beneficial, why exercise is beneficial, and why challenging your cells is beneficial. Many of the famous mud and water treatments that help arthritis have waters that are ever so slightly radioactive (well within safe limits but far higher than normal background radiation) for example.
Except we have hard proof that tanning your skin raises your risk of melanoma. And, in fact, tanning regularly is more harmful than getting burned rarely.
Personally, I think it’s easier to be extreme than balanced. Like a see-saw (or teeter totter depending on where you are) it’s way easier to sit on one end or the other. To try to stand on the middle and balance is hard.
A friend of mine met Patrick Moore, former President of Greenpeace, and asked Moore why he started supporting nuclear power, he told him essentially “It’s easier to be against everything than to be for something.”
I think it's the other way around. It's definitely easier to walk around under some sun shopping groceries and occasional brunch, than go to extremes and hide under some cover all the time, or sunbathing the whole day.
No because most people have jobs and limited money.
It’s easier in most people’s existing lives to avoid taking extreme health measures. Most people don’t go to a gym or exercise for the suggested min/day, but most people go to their job instead of staying in bed.
I must be living under a rock, but at least where I come from, it is common sense that some sun exposure is good. I've never heard of anyone saying that the sun should be avoided at all costs, it's weird. but then you find people on the internet who claim that cats (of all animals!) should stay at home at all costs. that's also weird. But these are mostly internet people, I've never found one in real life...
Maybe the general problem is that the internet has very vocal minorities.
> Please keep your cat indoors. Outdoor cats do not live as long as indoor cats. Outdoor cats are at risk of trauma from cars, or from fights with other cats, raccoons and free-roaming dogs. Coyotes are known to eat cats. Outdoor cats are more likely to become infested with fleas or ticks, as well as contract infectious diseases.
> claim that cats (of all animals!) should stay at home at all costs. that's also weird. But these are mostly internet people, I've never found one in real life...
I’m one of these people. I swear I’m not just an internet person. Most of my friends who own cats also have these views as well.
Cats are incredibly efficient killers and live a considerably shorter life when given unsupervised access outdoors. Just because it’s natural for them doesn’t mean it’s good for them or their environment. Cats can live perfectly happy lives indoors, if taken care of properly. This isn’t weird. What’s weird is what’s normal.
> I've never heard of anyone saying that the sun should be avoided at all costs, it's weird
Yeah that's because nobody says that.
They say, following the advice of every medical association ever, that you should wear sunscreen,
Somehow, people interpret "sunscreen" as "no sun". Not the same thing. You still get Vitamin D and all the benefits of the sun with sunscreen because you are, in fact, in the sun.
>It’s okay to get some sun but just baking under it for hours isn’t great. Shirt off for a run? Great. Swimming for an hour? Great.
That very much depends on your climate and skin type. In many circumstances, that kind of casual exposure can still result in dangerous levels of UV exposure.
I think it depends on your skin tone. Black people can get a lot of sun without burning. White people evolved in a cloudy climate and need less sun for the same health benefit (and also burn very quickly in midday sun in not cloudy climates).
If you maintain a base tan (equivalent to 2 hours in the sun or 10 minutes in a "standard" tanning bed, per week), the melanin is highly photoprotective for any additional UV exposure.
> * Shirt off for a run? Great. Swimming for an hour? Great.*
Tell me you don't live in Australia without telling me.
Doing that in Australia is basically the fast-track path to skin cancer thanks to the hole in the ozone layer.
Going back after ~10 years away I was staggered to experience the feeling of hot chilli peppers being ground into my skin after standing in the sun for ~5 minutes.
Yeah, I'm the same way. I love going outside and getting some exercise, even if it's just a long walk around the neighborhood. I never get anything close to sunburn, because I already have a crude sense of how long I can be out in the sun depending on the season and how exposed it's going to be. Sunscreen is great for those times when sunburn is likely, but under most circumstances, a hat and white long sleeve polyester shirts provide perfectly suitable protection for a few hours outside, even for a pretty light skinned white guy like me.
There's something about exercising outdoors that is incredibly effective at lifting my mood, well beyond the effect of doing the same indoors. For that reason you will find me outside all year round regardless of the weather.
It is a tough discussion as with anything nuanced online.
The negative consequences of UV exposure are compelling and very visible both with aging and skin cancer.
It would be irresponsible to promote uv exposure but also factually it is an effective treatment for some conditions in some people and possibly has less obvious benefit to others. UV exposure does things to our immune system that can't be replicated by vitamin D supplements. As crazy as it may seem, occasionally "basking in the sun" might be reasonably cheap, accessible and effective disease management for some very specific cases even if it doesn't seem very wise to say so and risk the accusatory finger pointing.
> I don't understand why people seem so resistant to the idea that some sun is probably beneficial.
A cynical take would be that it’s because there is no profit in sun exposure. Even places that would theoretically have a motivation to promote sun exposure, such as beaches and outdoor restaurants, have goals that are perfectly compatible with umbrellas and sunscreen and hats and sunglasses, etc. In fact, those are just complimentary sales for them. Tanning salons come to mind, but the sun is their biggest competitor.
> “basking in the sun” is almost certainly taking it too far
Plenty of animals sunbathe, though, not just humans. Lots of reptiles, of course, but my dog also does it every chance she can get.
My cat says sunbathing on the back of his (it's our, but I don't tell him that) couch is how he's reached his advanced age. He'll be 22 in a couple weeks.
Amusingly, my dogs specifically will only sit in the shade outside. Same for the various snakes and other animals in the yard. Hard to know if that is avoiding sun, or avoiding predator birds, though. My guess would be the birds are far more of a concern for the animals.
And those two are different from each other. It’s still the case that a wide variety of species seem to have evolved this way. I’m not saying our skin has the same tolerance - that seems unlikely. But I do think we benefit greatly from some level of sun exposure, ideally more than most people get today.
I agree we benefit from sun exposure, what I don't agree with is a lot of the anti-science BS I'm seeing in this thread.
1. No, tanning isn't good. We've known that for a long, long time. Remember tanning beds? Why don't people do that anymore?
2. Yes, you DO produce vitamin D while wearing sunscreen
3. Yes, you DO get mental health benefits from being in the sun with sunscreen
4. No, sunscreen DOES NOT cause cancer
These aren't even opinions. These people just don't know anything about anything, which is fine, but then they talk like they have it all figured out. Because their wrinkly granny survived the sun or something.
Can we stop with blatant misinformation? Why is this still such a problem on the internet and why is it a problem on hacker news?
Grass is a terrible analogy here. Try putting a moth orchid or many ferns in direct mid-day sun and they'll quickly die no matter how much water is available.
I'm fine saying it is complicated. So, Maybe? I have grass right next to some that does not die due to the sun exposure. But it is shaded for large portions of the day, there.
All of that is to say, I don't think you can or should reduce this down to only sun exposure. There is more going on.
I absolutely agree on your premise - that sun, like most things, is about moderation.
I was just pondering on the example you gave: Is there a case where grass will die out from sun when that is the isolated factor? I would assume that there is, but I am not sure it is given.
Totally fair and I don't know. My yard actually has a sprinkler system, such that I don't think I'm flat out not watering it in the sunny time of the year. You can definitely see where the sun hits the yard for longer, though.
Agree! I think people are sooo scared of cancer (which is understandable) and have had 15 years of the sun screen industry beating the “always wear sun screen” drum (not that they are financially incentivised here at all!) that many people now just equate “sun = bad” because grey areas are hard.
The financial incentives for the sunscreen industry works both ways. If all sun exposure is bad people will minimize going out and sunscreen sales would plummet (no one is wearing sun screen while sitting in their homes).
So, in fact, the sunscreen industry is entirely incentivized to push the “the answer is always at the center of the extremes” mantra that is being repeated in this comment thread. Because that’s maximizing the use of their product because people will still go out to get the benefits of the sun but need to apply sunscreen to avoid the negative effects.
I expected far more comments about how the profit motive so often manages to drown out the scientific evidence; little disappointed how far down the page I was before I saw yours.
You forgot that being vitamine D deficit makes you potential customer of whole pharma because of your weak immunity. Vitamins cannot be patented so their supplements could be done by anyone.
Agenda against sun exposing and relativization of vitamin D deficits is strong indeed.
It's also useful to note that skin cancer is very easy to catch early. Melanoma is definitely not something you want to have if you catch it late, but early detection is cheap (equipment required: eyes and a mirror) and easy.
Treatment prior to melanoma reaching the capillaries is also relatively cheap and easy (excision with margins), and extremely successful (>99% remission).
Median time between "that mole is looking a little weird" and the melanoma infringing on the capillaries is roughly 4 months.
Maybe "growth factor" as in "sunlight is a growth factor" is appropriately neutral?
Case in point, melanin synthesis and libido systems are related: There's a drug "bremelanotide" and by now probably some others, injectable melanocortin receptor agonists originally marketed for whole-body skin tanning. But actually it's marketed for libido enhancement and in the process it turned out that most MC receptor subtypes regulate mood/cognition more than skin color
TL;DR, there's evidence to suggest - in humans - that sunlight exposure makes people want to bone. Assuming the sunlight -> MCR activation assumption is true lol
Yeah, I don't know why people care so much about what other people do with their skin but I suppose that's just human nature.
> why people seem so resistant to the idea that some sun is probably beneficial
For me, being outdoors isn't necessarily conducive to an enjoyable time. Very hostile environments like big ass roads, high speed limits, and just the general vibe in the US of questioning why someone could simply be existing without a goal in mind (e.g. Karen's calling the cops)
Just observing a typical yard, it is easy to see that grass can both have too much and too little sun. Indeed, cover it up and it will die. Expose it to direct sun all day for several days with no water and it will similarly die. (Well, not similarly, it will die in a different way.)
I realize we don't photosynthesize, and burning is clearly bad for us. But I don't understand why people seem so resistant to the idea that some sun is probably beneficial.
I also realize that literally "basking in the sun" is almost certainly taking it too far. :(