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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 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.
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.
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!
"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
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.
Mary Schmich is the original author.
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.
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.
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
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,"
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