Everything you've been told about sun exposure is upside down
We've all been told in many ways how dangerous the sun is.
It causes cancer!
And, after all cancer is the #2 leading cause of death in the US!
And, we've all been educated that the leading cause of skin cancer is sun exposure. That's something most everyone has accepted and adopted into their life.
You can't go anywhere in the summer without seeing people with long sleeve sunscreen shirts, wide brimmed hats, and slathering all kinds of sunscreen on every exposed part of their body.
But, what if it is all built on faulty science?
What if the opposite is true?
Here's what you haven't been told about how much more dangerous it is to avoid the sun than it is to expose your skin to regular sun.
Before we start, let's be clear about what this issue is and isn't.
I am not going to tell you that sunburn is harmless. It isn't. Repeated severe sunburns are a legitimate risk factor for melanoma and nothing I'm going to share changes that.
What I will share is that the "avoid the sun" and "don't get burned" are two very different guidelines - we've largely been given the first when the science supports the second.
Avoiding the sun is actually more dangerous to your health than smoking tobacco!
More on that later!
That's actually the conclusion of a large population study. I find the history of how humans have lived for generations a good lens through which to look at current health issues. It's estimated that humans in our current form have roamed this planet for 200,000 to 300,000 years. While sunscreens have been around for about 100 yrs, it's only in the last 50 years that their popularity has exploded.
There are a few ways we can look at this to help shed light (no pun intended) on the issue of our relationship with the sun.
FIRST, a few uncontroversial FACTS...
- All life on this planet is entirely dependent on the sun.
- Plants use sunlight to power photosynthesis, taking in CO2 and releasing O2 as a byproduct while producing sugar.
- We use that sugar and O2 from plants to generate our energy.
- Humans produce a number of essential hormones, peptides, and neuropeptides in response to sun exposure.
- Our internal biological clocks get synced with appropriate sun exposure
Let's Look at the Truth...
Humans have lived in rhythm with the sun and darkness of this planet for as long as we have walked the surface. Well, until relatively recently.
We have a number of beneficial – what I'd consider essential biological processes that require sun exposure. Let's come back to that.
What about Melanoma and other skin cancers?
During this time of tremendous growth in the popularity of sunscreens the incidence of Melanoma has risen significantly since the 1950s.
The rising incidence of skin cancer paralleling the rising use of sunscreens and the increased time spent indoors deserves some attention.
One US study found Melanoma rates rising 17-fold in men and more than 9-fold in women between 1935 and 2022.
Maybe Melanoma isn't on the Rise
This rise in melanoma is not as clear cut as it might seem.
But, you've been led to believe that skin cancer is skyrocketing and the sun is to be avoided. Studies like this one estimate a 60% overdiagnosis among white Americans driven by biopsies.
| Original Investigation | FREE | " Cite C Permissions ~ Metrics |
|---|---|---|
| Estimating Overdiagnosis of Melanoma Using Trends Among Black and White Patients in the US | ||
| Adewole S. Adamson, MD, MPP1; Elizabeth A. Suarez, PhD2; H. Gilbert Welch, MD, MPH3 | JAMA Dermatol Published Online: March 16, 2022 2022;158;(4):426-431. doi:10.1001/jamadermatol.2022.0139 | |
That study is worth understanding. Black Americans get far fewer skin biopsies but their melanoma death rate has been flat for decades. White Americans get many more biopsies and their diagnosis rate has climbed dramatically – while their date rate has stayed flat.
If our system was finding and removing cancers then the expectation would be that deaths would be falling. But, they aren't.
Whether it is on the rise or not this period parallels the rapid rise in the use of sunscreens.
I think one thing is likely clear, and that is that sunscreens just might not be as protective as we might hope.
The Eyes Have It!
Our eyes have light receptors that have nothing to do with vision and our skin is loaded with receptors that respond to a variety of different light wavelengths from UVA, UVB, Blue, to Red and Infrared.
We have rising usage of sunscreen and at the same time rising or static skin cancer rates. If the sun were so dangerous one would expect to find lower incidence of skin cancer in people who avoid the sun.
Not so!
Evidence the Sun isn't the Danger We've Been Told
More than one science publication has found evidence to the contrary: Here's what one review paper said:
"Outdoor workers ... can get three to nine times as much solar UVR exposure as indoor workers ... Paradoxically, outdoor workers have a lower incidence of cutaneous malignant melanoma compared to indoor workers." BioMed Central
Maybe if it were one paper we could brush it off, but there's more...
Another review framed the "paradox" more cautiously, stating:
"Analyses of data from large studies have generally found greater risk of melanoma in indoor than outdoor occupations (according to the intermittent exposure hypothesis of etiology)." ICNIRP+1
That phrase in parenthesis is the key to this issue and it's easy to blow past it.
The intermittent exposure hypothesis says that the risk of melanoma is associated with sudden, intense sun exposure on skin that isn't adapted to it. The typical office worker who goes to the tropics from northern latitudes and burns himself a few times a year. It is not associated with total lifetime sun exposure.
The outdoor laborer gets three to nine times the UV on skin that is adapted. The accountant gets a small fraction of it, often all at once, on skin that hasn't seen the sun for months.
The outdoor laborer does better. This makes sense once you know what is being measured.
A policy summary from Australia noted:
"Overseas research suggests that the incidence of cutaneous malignant melanoma may be similar or higher among indoor workers than in outdoor workers." Cancer Council Australia
Wow!
We've been led to believe that the sun is dangerous, even toxic, and something to be avoided.
Of course this advice totally ignores that the body makes a number of essential and extremely beneficial chemicals in response to sun exposure. Things like:
- Vitamin D: sunlight converts cholesterol (a subject for another day) into Vitamin D which is involved in bone, muscle, immune function, lower cancer risk, lower autoimmune risk.
- A peptide called POMC (pro-opiomelanocortin) generates a number of substances critical to health:
- a-MSH - melanin, anti-inflammatory, immune modulating
- ACTH - stress response, anti-inflammatory
- B-Endorphin - mood, pain relief,
- Nitric Oxide -vasodilation, insulin sensitivity
- Cytokines and T-Cells - lower incidence of autoimmune disorders like multiple sclerosis and Type-1 Diabetes
- Serotonin and Melatonin rhythms - mood, sleep, metabolic regulation
Look at the nitric oxide line. It connects this issue to most everything I write about. Sunlight striking the skin releases nitric oxide, dilating blood vessels and lowering blood pressure. This is completely separate from Vitamin D.
This means that the sun is not a vitamin delivery system that can be replaced with a capsule. The sun is a metabolic signal.
That is critical.
One of the arguments in favor of limiting sun exposure is based on the assumption that the only benefit from the sun is Vitamin D and you can take that as a supplement.
First, it doesn't work as well as a supplement as when your body does what it is designed to do.
Second, you miss out on all those other chemicals.
So, maybe, just maybe the sun not only isn't as harmful as we've been led to believe!
And, maybe, just maybe, avoiding the sun could be more dangerous than they've scared us into thinking the sun is.
A Swedish study found out that.....
Avoiding the Sun is Worse Than Smoking!
This study followed more than 29,000 women for 20 years and this is what they found:
J Intern Med. 2014 Jul;276(1):77-86. doi: 10.1111/joim.12251. Epub 2014 Apr 23.
Avoidance of sun exposure is a risk factor for all-cause mortality: results from the Melanoma in Southern Sweden cohort
P G Lindqvist 1, E Epstein, M Landin-Olsson, C Ingvar, K Nielsen, M Stenbeck, H Olsson
Women with active sun exposure had lower overall mortality rates than those who avoided the sun
They compared the non-smokers who avoided the sun to smokers who went out in the sun and found that the non-smoking sun avoiders had a similar life expectancy.
Unless smoking is really not that bad this proved how detrimental sun avoidance is. Let's be really clear about what this does and does not meant. It would be far too easy to come to the wrong conclusion.
This is not an argument that smoking is safe. Not even close. Smoking is lethal and this study does nothing to contradict that.
What the researchers found was that avoidance of the sun looked like a risk factor comparable. The excess deaths from sun avoidance came from cardiovascular and other non-cancer causes. Not by skin cancer.
It doesn't prove causation. But with a study of 30,000 women finding effects that are in opposition to the public health advice, it needs to be looked at.
What About Supplementing Vitamin D?
Maybe you're not convinced of the benefit of all those neurotransmitters and hormones the body produces in response to the sun.
Maybe you're thinking of simply supplementing your diet with a Vitamin D capsule. How does that work?
Why The Confusion?
If sunscreen doesn't offer the protection we thought we were getting and if avoiding the sun is far more harmful than getting out in it, where did the confusion come from?
First, none of this is to suggest that too much sun isn't harmful.
Skin cancer is associated with repeated severe sunburns. But, that's not what we're talking about here.
If you do have a mole changing shape, color, or size or an area that isn't healing, get it looked at.
When scientists explored the dangers of sun exposure they conducted studies using only UV (Ultraviolet) light. The problem with this approach is that UV light from the sun never exists in isolation like that.
Whenever you experience UV light from the sun there is plenty of Red and Infrared light present. In fact there is far more red light than UV light. The emerging evidence from studies is that the red and near-infrared (NIR) light "pre-conditions" the skin for UV exposure.
Old Paradigms Die Slowly
Unfortunately, the information we've discussed here has yet to make it into the practice of dermatologists and other medical doctors.
It's akin to the time when we were told butter was unhealthy and we should eat margarine. Only to find out that not only is butter a healthy fat but the trans-fats in margarine are especially dangerous.
That is worth remembering whenever you are told that some piece of science around health is settled. An entire generation replaced a traditional fat with one that caused much more harm.
It's my intention to shine a light on some of these Sacred Cows of healthcare that are not only wrong, but are harmful to our health.
Once a belief gets established it can be much harder to challenge it than it was to establish it in the first place.
Some of the current paradigms that need challenging are:
- Indoor lighting and its effects
- Animal protein
- Animal fat
- Cholesterol and Statins
- Inflammation and Anti-Inflammatories
Back to the Sun
I think it's pretty clear that we were designed to have a relationship with the sun. We not only survived but thrived for tens or hundreds of thousands of years without the benefit of sunscreen.
And, we haven't even touched on the fact that the chemical sunscreens are endocrine disruptors. They have been shown in laboratory studies to interfere with your sex hormones, your thyroid, and others.
And, the FDA's own 2019 and 2020 trials found that common chemical filters are absorbed into the bloodstream at levels above the safety review threshold.
The best way to expose yourself to the sun so that you get the benefits without the risk is to do it gradually. This has been called developing your "Solar Callus".
This is exactly what the intermittent exposure research would predict: adapted skin is a completely different exposure compared to unadapted skin hit hard a few times in summer.
Your skin type will help determine how slowly you need to expose yourself to the sun. In the beginning it might be as little as 5 to 15 minutes of sun exposure.
There is a great phone app called DMinder which will tell you the UV rating for your location each day. In the beginning expose your skin with a UV rating under 7 and work your way up. Expose as much skin as possible. The app will also help you figure out how much vitamin D you made with each exposure.
Get out in the sun as often as you can. For those of us who live in northern latitudes we only have 5 good months of sun exposure. This is the time to build up your Vitamin D stores.
Here's what this looks like for me living in the northern latitudes.
First light outdoors every morning, all year, no sunglasses. That is more about the circadian signal than Vitamin D. As much midday sun exposure as the season and my skin conditioning allow. I build up gradually from spring. No chemical sunscreen. When I've had enough I seek the shade or go inside.
Shade, clothing, and timing were the only form of sun protection humanity had for thousands of years. They still work.
The Big Message Here
The take away from this discussion transcends the sun and Vitamin D issue. Yes, the current framework and guidelines are not just wrong, they are harmful to your health.
But, there's a much bigger issue here!
Our healthcare system with its reductionistic approach is really a sickcare system that has little awareness and focus on health.
I contend that while health and illness exist on a continuum, you can never achieve robust health if your focus is on treating illness or disease. Or, if your focus is on avoiding illness.
If you really desire to be healthy...
If you really desire to stay healthy...
If you want all the benefits of robust health...energy, focus, metabolic health, hormonal health, great sleep...
Then you need a different perspective.
You need to cultivate the environment in which you live that is different from the environment in which people who succumb to the accepted age-related decline live in.
There is a saying I embrace...
"You can't get healthy in the same environment that made you sick"
Maybe you aren't sick or don't consider yourself sick. The same principle applies to the entire continuum from robust health to not feeling well to symptoms to illness and eventually to disease.
You don't have to and shouldn't wait until you actually get sick to take action. To do that is to surrender yourself to a system whose focus and training is on the diagnosis and treatment of disease.
You don't get healthy by treating conditions and disease. At best you get less sick.
Give a person suffering with depression an anti-depressant and at best you get someone less depressed. But, it doesn't result in someone filled with joy and positivity.
Here's the first step I suggest you do.
Tomorrow morning go outside within a half hour of waking (preferably at sunrise) and stay out for at least ten minutes. No sunglasses, no windows, no contact lenses. Do this every day for two weeks and pay attention to your sleep at the end of the day.
That's the condensed method. Change a single signal and watch what your biology does. Next issue I'm going after one of medicine's Sacred Cows – early detection. It might surprise you.
To Your Health Sovereignty,
Bill MetabolicResilience.com