Avoidance of Sun exposure is a risk factor of similar magnitude as smoking, in terms of life expectancy.
how much sun do you need? Current guidelines for sun exposure are unhealthy and unscientific, controversial new research suggests—and quite possibly even racist.
How did we get it so wrong? Here is an extract from a well researched article on the subject by Rowan Jacobsen who is an Author of books and articles on food, travel, adventure, and natural systems. He offers some ideas on how much sun you need.
A quick synopsis, Jacobson lays out how in the pursuit of protecting our bodies from the Sun we maybe opening ourselves up to even bigger health risks. Some of these risks are not offset by taking manufactured Vitamin D. He explores how vitamin D supplementation has failed spectacularly in clinical trials. He further explores how being outdoor more often may not be a bad thing and makes this statement. “Melanoma, the deadly type of skin cancer, is much rarer, accounting for only 1 to 3 percent of new skin cancers. And perplexingly, outdoor workers have half the melanoma rate of indoor workers.”
He also explores why a 20 years of the study showed sun avoiders were twice as likely to die as sun worshipers.
Here at Eastern Medicine when asked how much sun do you need, we have always suggested a moderate view of sun exposure. We recommend avoiding the Midday sun on High UV days and wearing suitable clothing when exposed for long periods. Our sentiment which lacks scientific validation but one that maybe proved in the future, is to expose ourselves to the sun at the more gentle times of the day and to avoid long periods of exposure on high UV days.
As many of you already know we are not big fans of many sunscreens, as they are not environmentally friendly. If you want to know more or like to discuss sun protection and or exposure please be sure to give us a call or bring it up at your next consultation.
Please enjoy the article, Stephen Phillips
These are dark days for supplements. Although they are a $30-plus billion market in the United States alone, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, selenium, beta-carotene, glucosamine, chondroitin, and fish oil have now flopped in study after study.
If there was one supplement that seemed sure to survive the rigorous tests, it was vitamin D. People with low levels of vitamin D in their blood have significantly higher rates of virtually every disease and disorder you can think of: cancer, diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, heart attack, stroke, depression, cognitive impairment, autoimmune conditions, and more. The vitamin is required for calcium absorption and is thus essential for bone health, but as evidence mounted that lower levels of vitamin D were associated with so many diseases, health experts began suspecting that it was involved in many other biological processes as well.
And they believed that most of us weren’t getting enough of it. This made sense. Vitamin D is a hormone manufactured by the skin with the help of sunlight. It’s difficult to obtain in sufficient quantities through diet. When our ancestors lived outdoors in tropical regions and ran around half naked, this wasn’t a problem. We produced all the vitamin D we needed from the sun.
But today most of us have indoor jobs, and when we do go outside, we’ve been taught to protect ourselves from dangerous UV rays, which can cause skin cancer. Sunscreen also blocks our skin from making vitamin D, but that’s OK, says the American Academy of Dermatology, which takes a zero-tolerance stance on sun exposure: “You need to protect your skin from the sun every day, even when it’s cloudy,” it advises on its website. Better to slather on sunblock, we’ve all been told, and compensate with vitamin D pills.
Vitamin D supplementation has failed spectacularly in clinical trials.
Yet vitamin D supplementation has failed spectacularly in clinical trials. Five years ago, researchers were already warning that it showed zero benefit, and the evidence has only grown stronger. In November, one of the largest and most rigorous trials of the vitamin ever conducted—in which 25,871 participants received high doses for five years—found no impact on cancer, heart disease, or stroke.
How did we get it so wrong? How could people with low vitamin D levels clearly suffer higher rates of so many diseases and yet not be helped by supplementation?
As it turns out, a rogue band of researchers has had an explanation all along. And if they’re right, it means that once again we have been epically misled.
These rebels argue that what made the people with high vitamin D levels so healthy was not the vitamin itself. That was just a marker. Their vitamin D levels were high because they were getting plenty of exposure to the thing that was really responsible for their good health—that big orange ball shining down from above.
READ MORE: This is part of a great article by