We all hear so many rumors about the sun. Dozens of people are so against sun tanning and tanning beds meanwhile others believe the sun provides us with the Vitamins we need for healthy, glowing skin! So what’s the deal?
In the suns defense, sunlight provides us with loads Vitamin D. According to Lynette Summerill, our skin colors actually require different amounts of Vitamin D. Someone who is fair skinned require much less sunlight when compared to a darker skinned person. A darker skinned person requires up to six times more sunlight in order to receive enough nutrients.
A study was done by Rachel Neale, principal investigator at Queensland Institute of Medical Research, in Queensland to see if sun exposure has a protective effect against pancreatic cancer. She followed 714 Australians for 4 years. She matched them by age and sex with 709 control participants. Neale tested if living in high areas of UV radiation/sun exposure can lower your risk of pancreatic cancer. As a result, she found that people who lived in high areas of UV radiation had a 24 percent less chance of getting pancreatic cancer when compared to those who lived in low areas of UV radiation. Another finding was those who had sun-sensitive skin were 49% less likely to receive pancreatic cancer, compared to those who reported to have less sun-sensitive skin.
Another positive externality from sunlight is that skin cancer patients are less likely to get heart disease, or die prematurely. A study reported in the International Journal of Epidemiology proved this. The authors, from Copenhagen University Hospital, state that although many people think sunlight has many negative effects, studies are unclear to this hypothesis. Their study was 40 years long, and included 4.4 million men and women- including 130,000 with non-melanoma skin cancer, 22,000 with cutaneous malignant melanoma, 330,856 with a heart attack, 130,000 with a hip fracture and 1.6 million people who died. As a result, people with non-melonma skin cancer had a 4% less risk of suffering a heart attack, and 48% were less likely to die from another cause. The risk of hip fractures was also lowered.
After reading, please share how you feel about these new findings of sunlight! Clearly, too much sunlight is not all that bad, and can actually decrease your risks for other cancers!
Sources:
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/06/26/sun-exposure-and-your-health-good-bad-and-ugly/
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/is-too-much-sun-bad-for-you-not-always-8831840.html
I’m not sure how much I would agree with this post simply because it seems to be biased towards the positive impacts of the sun. Although it may decrease your risk for pancreatic cancer it increases the risk for skin cancer. I believe that not protecting yourself from the sun would be unwise. Here is an article on more damaging effects of the sun and why you should protect yourself from it. http://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/healthy_living/hic_An_Overview_ofYour_Skin/hic_protecting_yourself_from_sun_damage
I feel like this new discovery is the case with most things in life. There is always a positive and negative side. For example, the sun may lower the risk of pancreatic cancer, but it can also significantly increase your chances of skin cancer and melanoma. I think like all things, the best thing to do is be in the sun in moderation. Not too much sun and not too little is the perfect mix because it is just what the body needs.
Even though being exposed to high levels of sun/UV radiation may lower your risk of pancreatic cancer, UV radiation exposure is believed to be cause of melanoma, an extremely dangerous cancer to have if not treated very early. A little sun may be ok, but a recent study suggests that getting badly sunburnt just 5 times as a teenager can increase your chances of getting melanoma later in life by as much as 80%. Still gotta be careful.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2646101/Women-badly-sunburned-just-FIVE-times-teenagers-80-likely-develop-dangerous-type-skin-cancer.html
I found this blog very interesting because my friends and family also discuss the sun! Most of my family members think the sunlight does more harm to people than good. I am relatively dark in skin-tone because my mom’s side of the family is Hispanic so I get tan very easily. My family in general tans easily and isn’t fair-skinned. I agree that people of a darker pigment need more sunlight to gain the necessary nutrients (Vitamin D). Tanning beds and booths are a different story because that isn’t natural sunlight. Too much sunlight is obviously not good for you because it can lead to skin cancer and other illnesses if you are constantly out in the sun for hours on end. If you go out in moderation, you will be perfectly fine. It has even been proven by scientists than an hour or so outside a day is good for the skin and body. Due to this and the nutrient aspect of sunlight, I think that sunlight provides more benefits to your body than harming it. Below is a link that talks about all the healthy benefits of sunlight. I think it will surprise most people.
http://www.care2.com/greenliving/7-little-known-benefits-of-sunlight.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130507195807.htm
I am extremely fair-skinned and every summer I find my mom yelling that I spend too much time in the sun and there’s no way that it can be healthy, so I’ll be sure to let her know that there can be positive effects of being in the sun for a long time! I think both of these experiments were well-conducted and they each used enough people or followed the subjects for a long enough time to be considered significant. Rachel Neale used plenty of control participants as well as experimental participants, and 4 years is definitely enough time to see the results unfold. The second experiment used over 4 million people to test their hypothesis, giving a lot of range and testing so many types of people, and following them for 40 years is important as well. It’s definitely good to know that sunlight can reduce your risk of heart disease and lower your risk for dying of other causes, but the patients are still suffering from skin cancer, and doesn’t that cause plenty of deaths on its own? Is it easier to cure skin cancer and have less risk of dying of other diseases, or should people avoid getting so much sun because of the risk of skin cancer? While it is a terrible disease in itself, it is still nice to know that benefits can come from it. Overall, it looks like too much sun can definitely have some good results, which makes me feel a lot better about spending almost every day of the summer burning at the beach.