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Sunscreen Not So Good for You?
j-beda writes "Don't like sunscreen? Maybe that tan is good for you. It looks like people are rethinking the common wisdom of avoiding sun exposure... "research suggests that vitamin D might help prevent 30 deaths for each one caused by skin cancer". Maybe if Kurt Vonnegut ever does address MIT grads, he will say something else..."
In Australia, we have much higher UV levels than you do in the northern hemisphere. Skin cancer is a real concern. I have several friends that have had cancerous growth removed while they were in their twenties. Certainly vitamin D deficiencies can be a problem, however this can easily fixed with very low exposure levels. If you ever visit Australia use sunscrean or become a lobster in 15 minutes.
I live in Queensland, Australia. Thousands of people a years die from skin cancer, in fact we have the highest rate of skin cancer in the world. Only stupid people go out in the sun exposed here. Most people in their 50s or older who spenmt their childhood in the sun before the skin cancer campains of the 70s have had skin cancers cut out.
If you bothered to read the article, you would be aware that there are different forms of vitamin D, and that most pills contain a different form than that produced by sunbathing (and also not very much of it).
It also noted that excessive vitamin D from pills can lead to a build-up of calcium in the body (not a good thing), which is not an issue with sunbathing.
Vitamin pills shouldn't be necessary at all - if you need them, then there's something wrong with your diet and/or lifestyle.
It's also important to know your genetic predisposition. For example, if you have type I (very fair skin), getting skin cancer eventually at some point in your life is inevitable: all you need is to live long enough and get enough sun. The type of skin cancer you will get from such chronic UVB exposure is most likely a basal cell carcinoma (not fatal) and 30% of these occur on the nose. As another example, if you have the dysplastic nevus syndrome (DN), you'll will have a higher incidence of malignant melanoma. This type of cancer is related more to acute sunburn than chronic exposure and is much more deadly: if you detect them early they are 100% curable, too late and they are 0% curable. Have a nice summer!
Mary Schmich is the original author.
HDL or LDL is not actually cholesterol. They are what they say they are: lipoproteins. Cholesterol is cholesterol. All living creatures (ok, let's just say vertebrates, I am not very sure here) incorporate cholesterol into their cell walls to make cells waterproof. Because cholesterol is insoluble in water and thus also in blood, it is transported in our blood inside spheric particles composed of fats (lipids) and proteins, the so-called lipoproteins. Lipoproteins are easily dissolved in water because their outside is composed mainly of water-soluble proteins. The inside of the lipoproteins is composed of lipids, and here are room for water-insoluble molecules such as cholesterol. Like submarines, lipoproteins carry cholesterol from one place in the body to another. The main task of HDL is to carry cholesterol from the peripheral tissues, including the artery walls, to the liver. Here it is excreted with the bile, or used for other purposes, for instance as a starting point for the manufacture of important hormones. The LDL submarines mainly transport cholesterol in the opposite direction. They carry it from the liver, where most of our body's cholesterol is produced, to the peripheral tissues, including the vascular walls. When cells need cholesterol, they call for the LDL submarines, which then deliver cholesterol into the interior of the cells. Most of the cholesterol in the blood, between 60 and 80 per cent, is transported by LDL and is called "bad cholesterol". Only 15-20 percent is transported by HDL and called "good" cholesterol. A small part of the circulating cholesterol is transported by other lipoproteins. So you see, bad cholesterol is actually good at something very important. Of course, excess is bad. Bad eating habits stimulate the overproduction of cholesterol, much more then what the body needs. So much more that the HDL cannot "recycle" back to the liver, so the excess gets stuck on the artery walls. So the parent is right, cholesterol IS necessary for the body to function. If you magically got rid of all your LDL "bad cholesterol", you'd be dead.
1) Milk ISN'T good for you, period, [sic]
Actually, it all depends on who you mean by "you," and what your underlying assumptions are about resources, technology, etc. If you are lactose intolerant, then by all means stay away from milk. That doesn't mean you can't have cheese and yogurt, though. It is a well-accepted theory that the lactose tolerance mutation of northern European populations is one of the factors that enabled their success (and by success, I mean they didn't all die out). It is also true that Mongolian tribesmen may not have the resources to eat fresh kale to get their calcium, or to buy soy "milk" from their local organic grocery store. However, goats, sheep, and cows can digest grasses and produce milk with--guess what--calcium! But in fact, it's the casein in milk that supplies the protein, and many vegetarian cultures have relied on dairy products for a large part of their protein consumption.
2) humans weren't supposed to drink another animals milk [sic]
You should be careful when using words like "supposed" because you imply you have some sort of insight into the Way the Universe Should Be. Bullshit. You can't say humans weren't supposed to drink milk anymore than you can say humans weren't meant to jump rope. No other animal does that, either. No other animal writes poetry, or commits suicide, or contemplates philosophy. Just because humans differ from other animals does NOT imply any should or ought, so shut your mouth unless you have some Divine Insight. I would like to point out that other animals may not drink milk after infancy, but they do eat organ meat, entrails, eyeballs, and all sorts of other nutrient-rich animal parts that we tend to discard, these days--including partially digested food in the animal's intestinal tract. Maybe you'd prefer eating tripe to drinking milk?
3) This is ignoring the pitfalls falls of todays production techniques whereby they pump growth hormones into the cows so they produce milk far longer than they are normally capable of. [sic]
This is your single valid point, and it is only valid for milk from a regular dairy. Those same organic grocery stores that sell soy milk also sell milk from cows without all those hormones and (though you didn't mention it) antibiotics. But you're tangling the issues, here. That is an argument for better treatment of dairy cattle, not an argument against milk itself. I have a problem eating hot dogs, these days, but that doesn't make all meat repulsive to me.
Maybe someday it will be proven that milk is the poison you make it out to be. But now, the evidence is far from conclusive, and you obviously don't know your milk history. As it stands, milk was probably responsible for my ancestors' survival, and your burden of proof is pretty high. Oh, and a better grasp of English grammar and spelling might help you be more persuasive, in the future. It would be comical that you have a sentence "Milk ISN'T good for you period," ending in a comma, except that I'm pretty sure you didn't intend that.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
Yeah, people need to RTFA:
In late May 1997, Chicago Tribune metro columnist (and "Brenda Starr" writer) Mary Schmich was walking to work along Lake Shore Drive, wondering what she was going to write about that day. It occurred to her that it was near graduation time and she thought she would write a column that read like a commencement address. As she wondered what advice she might offer, she saw a woman sunbathing on the shore of Lake Michigan.
"I hope she's wearing sunscreen," thought Schmich, 45, "because I didn't at that age."
And that's how newspaper columns are born.
A couple of months later, the column became an Internet hoax when a prankster - never identified except as "Culprit Zero" - copied it, labeled it as "Kurt Vonnegut's commencement address at MIT,"