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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..."
I'm a vampire, you insensitive clod !
Crivens! I kicked meself in me own heid!
No sun -> little vitamin D production = bad.
Some sun -> vitamin D production = good.
Ridiculous amounts of sun -> high risk for cancer = bad.
I didn't read the article, but most things are OK on modetate doses. Cholesterol, for example, is necessary for the body to function.
Too much of any one thing is seldom a good idea.
.: Max Romantschuk
Ah, so not only tanning makes you look cool, it saves you from dying? Yet another great reason to give in to peer-pressure! o:)
It wasn't Kurt Vonnegut who made the "Wear Sunscreen" speech although it has often been attributed to him. It was actually a female columnist with a Chicago (I think) paper.
It seems like you just need to use a modicum of common sense. Too much of anything is bad for you. The less "natural" and more refined a product is the less likely it is to be good for you. It is healthy to get outside and do some exercise every now and then.
All this research seems to contradict itself every few years anyway. I suspect a lot of scientists misuse/misunderstand their own data, either to match their own preconceptions, or to make a headline grabbing story like this one.
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.
Actually, if you're thinking of getting some vitamin D by lying without sunscreen on the beach near the sea, you'de probably be much better of eating seafood ! Many fishes contain vitamin D, sardines, mackerels, salmon... + you don't get skin cancer.
\u262D = \u5350
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.
But put it on after you've been out in the sun for a few minutes, rather than before going out into the sun. Your body needs very little time exposed to UV-B light to produce sufficient amounts of Vitamin D. Far less time than it takes to get a tan (or in my case, a burn. I couldn't tan, even if I wanted to).
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
From personal experience I can also add that the sun in the Northern Hemisphere never seemed as hot or burning as the sun in Australia. I could walk around in the summer sun in Boston and barely get even a touch of colour. In Australia I would be burnt in less than an hour - probably quicker. Sun screen is very important in Australia as is a hat and a shirt.
And finally, this article demonstrates the quest of reporters to beat up each marginal scientific discovery into something that it isn't just to get a good headline. With medical news this invariably creates all sorts of problems. The study found that Vitamin D can be beneficial for treating cancers but said absolutely nothing about the delivery mechanism. Getting your Vitamin D directly from the sun also means you get wonderful melanomas via UVA and UVB radiation. Sure, Vitamin D on its own is fine but the side effects of getting it directly from the sun are pretty severe.
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.
...leading scientist say that while drinking four to five glasses of water a day is quite healthy, walking around with the garden hose duct-taped to your mouth may cause serious harm.
There's also the psychological factor. Depression is common, and often fatal (not necessarily through suicide, but through self-neglect). Skin cancer is less common, and usually treatable. And sunbathing is good for depression, so might well save more lives than it costs on that basis, too.
If science has taught us anything it's that:
1) Everything in moderation.
2) Research causes cancer in lab-rats.
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
Ok im a little behind this year so correct me:
Cell Phones: not dangerous
Salmon: ok
Sudan-1: bad
Power lines: definately bad
Condoms: dont have holes
Beef: depends on country
Sunscreen: bad?
Lead piping: ok now?
GM food: border-line
Torture: 'acceptable in some situations'
Violent video games: leads to violent people
Flares: out
Mullets: out
Ironic Mullets: in but slipping
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
And not only does the extra vitamin D help prevent cancer, but just not putting a chemical-laden substance on your body also helps prevent cancer. While I'm sure there are some safe, quality sun screens you can get at the health food store, most of what people are pouring all over them and their kids contain harsh chemicals:
http://www.mercola.com/2000/oct/15/sunscreen.htm
The main chemical used in sun lotions to filter out ultraviolet light may be TOXIC, particularly when exposed to sunshine.
Octyl methoxycinnamate (OMC), which is present in 90 per cent of sunscreen brands, was found to kill mouse cells even at low doses in a study by Norwegian scientists.
It is not certain that the effects on mice are repeated in human beings, although the findings reported in New Scientist magazine suggest that human cells could be damaged if a sunscreen containing OMC penetrates the outer layer of dead skin and comes into contact with living tissue.
Terje Christensen, a biophysicist from the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority, near Oslo, said her research showed that sunscreens should be treated with caution, and used only when it was impractical to stay indoors or to shield the skin from the sun with clothes.
The chemical is used as a filter for the more harmful UVB light. In Dr Christensen's study, mouse tissue grown in culture was treated with a solution of OMC at five parts per million - a much lower concentration than in sunscreens. Half the cells treated with OMC died, compared with fewer than 10 per cent in a control experiment.
When researchers shone a lamp for two hours to simulate midday sunshine, more cells died. Dr Christensen suggested that the reaction between OMC and sunlight created an effect that was twice as toxic as the chemical alone.
The Cosmetic Toiletry and Perfumery Association, which represents sunscreen manufacturers in Britain, said that OMC "has been thoroughly tested for safety" and was approved by regulatory authorities in Europe and the US.
Dr. Mercola's Comment:
We ALL need sunshine to stay healthy. It is one of the essential ingredients for staying healthy. It is not the perniciously evil item that traditional medicine suggests that it is.
That does not mean that we should all go out and get sunburned. That should be avoided as it is likely to lead to an increase in skin cancer. However, prudent exposure to the sun, integrating the listening to your body concept, will not.
Adding sun screens is NOT a good way to limit your sun exposure. Staying out of the sun early on in the season and limiting your exposure until your system adjusts by increasing melanin pigmentation in your skin is.
Additionally, consuming many whole vegetables will increase antioxidant levels in the body which will also provide protection against any sun induced radiation damage.
So the bottom line is to avoid the sun screens. They are not necessary and will actually increase your risk of disease.
Related Articles:
Absorbing Titanium from Sunscreens
Sunscreens Don't Prevent Melanoma
Ron Paul
For those of us that don't understand fuzzy logic, what's "too much", "too little" and "some" in Lux?
Georg
"The head of Holick's department, Dr. Barbara Gilchrest, called his book an embarrassment and stripped him of his dermatology professorship, although he kept his other posts. " also see:Hanff
Rubies and Pearls are not what you think.
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
It clogs my pores.
"Lead my skeptic sight."
That all depends on your genetic origins, for someone like me, of northern european decent, with blonde hair, blue eyes and freckles, more than 30 minutes of sun during the hottest hours of the day is "too much". For someone of african decent, there probably isn't an upper limit (although without ozone that might not be true). For someone of southern italian decent, more than a few hours is too much.
Too little would be calculated by your necessity for Vitamin D.. I'd imagine less than an hour of exposure weekly might put you in that category, but I'm no nutritionalist.
BTW, I'm not a programmer either, what's Lux?
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
But the light, oh god it burns! It burns!
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The lux (symbol: lx) is the SI derived unit of illuminance or illumination. It is equal to one lumen per square metre.
Natural selection is very very poor at selecting for attributes that only become important after peak reproductive years. Sure there is the "wisdom of the elders" effect and a few people the reproduce (mostly males) in the later years but given that the vast majority of people die from skin cancer after they would have reproduced and given the historical lifecycle/reproductive cycle of humans it is not really all that surprising of an outcome.
--- Liberty in our Lifetime
I live in the UK, you insensitive clod.
"In many [western] countries, peoples' diet changed substantially in the second half of the twentieth century, generally with increases in consumption of meat, dairy products, vegetable oils, fruit juice, and alcoholic beverages, and decreases in consumption of starchy staple foods such as bread, potatoes, rice, and maize flour. Other aspects of lifestyle also changed, notably, large reductions in physical activity and large increases in the prevalence of obesity."[18]
"It was noted in the 1970s that people in many western countries had diets high in animal products, fat, and sugar, and high rates of cancers of the colorectum, breast, prostate, endometrium, and lung; by contrast, individuals in developing countries usually had diets that were based on one or two starchy staple foods, with low intakes of animal products, fat, and sugar, and low rates of these cancers."[18]
"These observations suggest that the diets [or lifestyle] of different populations might partly determine their rates of cancer, and the basis for this hypothesis was strengthened by results of studies showing that people who migrate from one country to another generally acquire the cancer rates of the new host country, suggesting that environmental [or lifestyle factors] rather than genetic factors are the key determinants of the international variation in cancer rates."[18]
See also:
Scientists estimate that most cancers are associated with factors related to how we live, called lifestyle factors. Evidence reviewed by the American Cancer Society suggests that about one-third of the 550,000 cancer deaths that occur in the United States each year is due to dietary factors (for example, excess calories, high fat, and low fibre). Another third is due to cigarette smoking. Other lifestyle factors which increase the risk for cancer include drinking heavily, lack of regular physical exercise, promiscuous sexual behavior,
Ron Paul
Too much of anything is bad for you. Too much water will kill you (it upsets your body's fluid balance)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
"You're gonna to your doctor in about 10 years...
'Your cholesterol is out of control, what have you been doing?'
'I dont know, I've been eating right, running, doing everything right...'
'Yeah, but have you been using sunblock?'
'Well, yeah'
'Whats the matter with you!? You should know better'"
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright
As much as the geek inside of my wants to say I avoid sunlight at all costs, it's actually quite the opposite.
I've struggled with acne/pimples a little more then your average Joe Blow, after spending a lot of money on chemicals and useless washing routines I found the cheapest and easiest solution.
Sunlight, I spend a few (moderate amounts) of time at the beach - and within 1 month of just a few hours per week at the beach, my acne was almost gone.
Even in winter I now try to spend a few hours per month atleast in my salt water pool, it works wonders. I also drag the laptop outside every few days and just spend a few hours in the moderate sunlight so my skin gets some extra special attention.
Think about it, we drink the milk of a cow, which is for cows not humans.
We also eat honey, which is for bees, not humans. And meat, which is for tigers, not humans. And fish, which is for bears, not humans. And plants, which are for cows, not humans.
It's kind of silly to worry about whether the food you're eating is "for" something other than you. All that matters is what it's made of, and cow's milk contains essentially the same stuff as human milk, but in different proportions.
BTW, what are "traces of gm"? General Motors? General Mills? General MacArthur? Surely you realize that genetic modification is not something that can be passed from one organism to another through eating.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Vitamin pills shouldn't be necessary at all - if you need them, then there's something wrong with your diet and/or lifestyle.
That's an overly scepticist view.
For instance, in Iceland it is so dark during the winter that it's simply not possible to get enough sun to avoid vitamin-D deficiency. Unless your view of a normal diet includes unusual amounts of cod-liver.
Dietary supplements wouldn't be necessary if everybody was living in a temperate environment and eating a good and varied diet. But most of the world's population don't fall into that category.
Rumor on campus was that he was drunk.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
A few years ago, various friends and family members bought their first computers. Pretty soon, I was getting a steady steam of hoax e-mails from them.
Over and over again I tried to explain to them that this stuff wasn't true. Bill Gates is NOT testing an e-mail tracking program and Microsoft will NOT send you any money if you forward this e-mail to all your friends. Congress is NOT about to impose a tax on e-mail.
I pointed them to the various websites that specialize in debunking urban legends and internet hoaxes. But it didn't work. They just took me off their mailing lists and kept on going. For some reason, people desperately want to believe stupid crap.
Unfortunately the article does not disclose the researcher's close dealings with the tanning salon industry. Is the science real? Yes. Does it encourage tanning and irresponsible sun exposure? Yes. Solution: it's better to simply drink vitamin D-fortified milk & OJ.
Let's learn something from Australia, where 1 in 7 people get skin cancer in their lifetimes.
/.ers would do well to look further into the hard science and get past the industry-backed FUD.
Rather than, or in addition to, SPF lotion, wear clothing. This brand is lightweight, well-vented and has titanium dioxide built right into the microfiber. My mom (who is sun sensitive from medication) uses them.
Kurt Vonnegut is a novelist. My top recommendation for a book to read by him would be Slaughterhouse Five. It's an account of the fire bombing of Dresden (which he witnessed, as a US soldier) near the end of World War II. Fantastic prose. So it goes.
I only drank a small amount, but it made me sick, and I got a tan.
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
Just buying it might not be enough. You might want to take the next step and drink it as well.
The real debate underlying this article surrounds the appropriate "dose" of vitamin D. The current recommendations in the US (400 IU per day) are entirely based on requirements for maintaining normal bone mineral composition. This has absolutely no relation to other biological effects of vitamin D (cellular differentiation, immune cell activity).
Whereas you can get 400 IU per day by drinking vitamin D fortified milk, full-body exposure to solar ultraviolet radiation can produce as much as 10,000 - 40,000 IU of vitamin D. In the winter and at high latitudes vitamin D production from solar UV can drop to zero. Between diet, supplements, and sun exposure, the ideal combination and target dose for cancer prevention has not been established. It is almost certainly considerably above the 400 IU that you need to maintain healthy bones.
We're nerds! We don't go out into the sun! Its hard to see our laptop screens from the damned glare!
Unnatural, isn't it?
Personally, I don't do anything unnatural to my food. No other animal cooks their food, so I don't cook anything I eat, or eat anything that I didn't pull from the ground or kill with my bare hands.
Also, I eat it without utensils, since no other animal does that, and I don't prepare anything I eat - I just pull whatever I want from the carcass right there. My backyard is starting to stink a lot, since I don't bury anything I kill since animals don't.
It's healthier because animals do it that way.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
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
If you can find a ripped MP3 of his 2000 comedy album, this story will make more sense:
0 04U4ST/ref=m_art_li_3/102-6655619-6516961?v=glance &s=music
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00
Track 3 -- The Ozone, Sunblock, The Flu and NYQUIL.
Enjoy!
IronChefMorimoto
And not just any fish, cold water fish. No? There's something wrong with your diet/lifestyle. How about someone with dark skin living in a northern clime. Vitamin D deficiency right there.
Sometimes the people who've spread out over the world have moved to areas where they simply can't get the stuff their body needs in sufficient quantities through local produce.
It's only the last couple of decades scientists have even begun to understand how food affects our wellbeing and only the last decade that the information has really started to filter through to the general populace.
Deleted
The Slashdot blurb is misleading. The article advises moderation. I don't recall anybody in recent years saying Sun exposure in moderate amount was bad. What else is news ?
Remember that while normally very rare, melanoma is the 4th most frequently diagnosed type of cancer in Australia, and rising.
Even if people there stopped going outside right now the incidence would probably continue to rise for many years, because of the delayed exposure.
It is highly curable but not good for you.
I remember in the early 80's my girlfriend and other women used baby oil of all things when they laid out.
I guess some study will prove this to be healthy to? The oil lubes the pores? LOL
Exposure to sunlight dries the skin. Baby oil moisturises the skin and therefore, I believe, slightly reduces the risk of serious sunburn. At least some of the pain and damage of sunburn is caused by drying of the skin.
So women covered in baby oil are not something to laugh at. As if anyone round here would.
Two different maladies are commonly referred to as skin cancer: melanoma and carcinoma.
Melanoma is deadly. Carcinoma is not something you want, but is generally not life-threatening.
There's a very strong positive correlation between sunlight exposure and Carcinoma. Not so melanoma.
A recent large study showed an inverse correlation between sunlight exposure and melanoma. Previous studies showed weak positive, or grouped all skin cancers together.
I don't think that anybody argues that skin-peeling burns are bad for you, but many experts are moderating previous advocacy of total sun-avoidance.
I am not a doctor! This is not medical advice, simply my experiences.
I am Type II diabetic. Radically different disease than Type I (insulin dependant), but that's another matter.
I've had some trouble over the past couple of years controlling my blood sugar levels. A few weeks ago, I went on a 1 week camping vacation to the gulf coast, and my blood sugar control was *excellent*. Once I returned home (and back to work), I regressed back to my previous moderately high sugar levels.
I tried a week of moderate activity the first week back, to try and reclaim the control I had during vacation. No luck.
The following weekend, a friend of mine and I took our kids to a local state park for some paddle boating and canoeing. When I returned home that evening, my blood sugar had returned to the good levels (~100).
The following week (last week), I spend 45m x 1hr in the sun at noon, with sunscreen only on the high sun parts. My blood sugar was in control the whole week.
Once I found that the sun *seems* to be a factor in my blood sugar control, I was able to explain other stretches of proper control in my diabetic life.
So, I plan to continue this experiment until my next visit to my endocrinologist (about a month). I haven't burned yet. Google vitamin D and diabetes - this is not the first article to extol the value of getting some sun.
I'm sure there's no big drug company doing research into the benefits of getting some sun for diabetics. Maybe some real estate companies in Florida should fund some research.
Like most accounts of the Dresden bombing, the witness becomes unstuck in time, travels to the planet Tralfamadore, and watches his own murder by a laser in Chicago in 1976.
In other words, challenge the currently accepted hypothesis, and be prepared for extreme backlash from those who have spent their careers supporting it, no matter how well thought out or researched your work is. Charles Fort was right. The high priesthood of science is exactly that. Blaspheme at your own peril.
I heard about this study a while ago on NPR (no, I don't choose to listen to it). They said that the study showed that to get the necessary vitamin D, we need 15 minutes of sun every 2 weeks. Unless you're nocturnal or a vampire, I don't see how this would be a problem....
I wonder what just how much oil J&J can extract from the average baby... Also what kind of apparatus is used.
Can you cook with it? What is the smoking point? Does it go rancid quickly like other animal fats? How about saturated fat content?
Would the fast food industry use this without our knowledge?
What about new cars? Could your motor benefit from baby oil for the first several hundred miles?
If you don't consume dairy, you'll go insane.
Every vegan I've ever met has been some degree of crazy. The less dairy they were willing to eat the crazier they were. Drink milk, stay sane.
paintball
> in Brisbane (Australia)
Australia does have increased risk factors including neing near to the ozone hole over the Antarctic.
Australians suffer the highest rates of skin cancer in the world. Each year, around 1,200 Australians die from what is an almost totally preventable disease. Everyone can develop skin cancer; however, some people may be at higher risk than others, due to a range of factors.
Australia exposed to more UV
Ultraviolet (UV) radiation levels in Australia are higher than in Europe, even during summer. Being located close to the ozone hole over the Antarctic means much higher, more severe levels of UV radiation get through to ground level.
During summer, the earth's orbit brings Australia closer to the sun than Europe during its summer, resulting in an additional seven per cent solar UV intensity. This, coupled with our clearer atmospheric conditions, means Australians are exposed to up to 15 per cent more UV than Europeans.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
"Have you ever looked at the ingredients in sunblock? I have never seen those ingredients anywhere. You have no idea what you are putting on your face....Oh oh oh the Sun's out...It could be Zebra Cum, you don't know...you may not like that joke, but you don't know" - Lewis Black, The White Album
To give one coutner tweak, not to refute your post's valid points, but to point out something of the scientifically valid but largely lost, "ought not" position.
There is a ["strongly suspected"] link between consumption of cow milk and late onset adult diabities (sp?). The mother-to-child antibody/antigen process now understood to be implicit in mamal milk seems to produce an immune response in humans that is nearly identical to the autoimmune response that has been linked with the distruction of the insulin producing cells in the pancreas.
So there is some basis to believe that consuming a lot of cow milk over the course of a lifetime may increase your risk of developing adult-onset diabiates.
So while I agree that milk consumption has made the survival of various clutures possible, and it is probably one of those double-edged things. If you _can_ avoid it, or at least moderate it, you probably _should_.
As for the rest, I am not so much concerned, as an adult, with the presence of hormones or antibiotics in my food as I am about what the antibiotics are doing "out in the field". In particular the continuous sheding into the soil of the antibiotics and partially resistent intestinal flora/fauna via cow dung provides the ideal low continuous dossage exposure necessary to produce an optimal yiled of resistent bacteria. Since they now know that bacteria can directly communicate that resistence to other unrelated bacteria. The dairy farm (and actually probably the pig and chicken farms as well) has become probable wellspring of harmless but highly resistent bacteria that may then be capable of turning very harmful, but not previously exposed, bacteria into super-pathogens.
The mis-management of antibotics world-wide in the twentith century is probably the greatest slient crime against humanity of that (this) era.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press