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Avoiding the Sun May be as Bad for You as Smoking
Related: air quality, cancer, exposure, follow the money, follow the self-interest, health, melanoma, nutrition, photobiomodulation, skin cancer, Vitamin D
re: follow the money
re: melanoma
re: photobiomodulation
Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.
I am re-running this post because of the medical malpractice out there by some dermatologists, who advise getting NO sun exposure. Then hoax publications like the New York Times spread that disinformation, citing those medical charlatans who are so incompetent that they have no concept of risk vs benefit eg risk assessment.
Here in late January, I already feel the sun waxing in its life-giving warmth. Enough that riding shirtless (no cycling jersey) is a pleasure, at least in the 12PM to 2PM range. And especially so after weeks of pummeling by rain.
Spring is coming then summer. That wonderful-feeling solar fusion sphere will have millions of people covering up and slathering on sunblock—to the detriment of their health and well being, denying their bodies the photobiomodulation that nature designed.
Fortunately, those COVID masks while riding a bike alone (not a joke) will not only protect you from COVID in the outdoors (a major public health threat I hear), but will also protect your face from that awful sun exposure.
BJD: Melanoma epidemic: a midsummer night’s dream
September, 2009. Emphasis added.
...Summary
Background The reported incidence of melanoma has greatly increased and this has been attributed to ultraviolet exposure.
Objectives We considered the possibility that the increase was an artefact caused by diagnostic drift.
Methods We tested this by analysing the histological diagnosis, mortality and incidence of all lesions reported as melanomas in East Anglia between 1991 and 2004.
Results There were 3971 melanomas in all, and their annual incidence increased from 9·39 to 13·91 cases per 100 000 per year during the period studied. This increased incidence was almost entirely due to minimal, stage 1 disease. There was no change in the combined incidence of the other stages of the disease, and the overall mortality only increased from 2·16 to 2·54 cases per 100 000 per year.
Conclusions We therefore conclude that the large increase in reported incidence is likely to be due to diagnostic drift which classifies benign lesions as stage 1 melanoma. This conclusion could be confirmed by direct histological comparison of contemporary and past histological samples. The distribution of the lesions reported did not correspond to the sites of lesions caused by solar exposure.
These findings should lead to a reconsideration of the treatment of ‘early’ lesions, a search for better diagnostic methods to distinguish them from truly malignant melanomas, re‐evaluation of the role of ultraviolet radiation and recommendations for protection from it, as well as the need for a new direction in the search for the cause of melanoma.
WIND: medical “science” today is often synonymous with intellectual fraud. Follow the money. Or is it just follow the other sheep, the mindless herd instinct?
Last year, I finally got a Dermatologist to admit that sun might actually be a good thing. All my past ones advised me of the danger of sun exposure, if the propaganda poster on the wall was not enough. The weird thing is how awkward the question is for some dermatologists—I sense an unsettled reaction from cognitive dissonance. So now I make a point of asking every time just for fun, and to know which doctor to abandon immediately.
May I summarize? Take your statin and BP meds, cut your NaCl (but ignore KCl), minimize saturated fats while eating seed oils, dominate your diet with inflammatory and diabetes-inducing grains, avoid eggs (cholesterol, the horror!)... and stay out of that dangerous sun! That’s the intellectual poison the medical profession has fed us for 60 or 70 years now.
The Cloth Thickens, The Enduring Mystery of Heart Disease @AMAZON
Emphasis added.
....
A further thing that you might not expect is that the action of sunlight on the skin creates nitric oxide. This lowers the blood pressure and has major benefits on CVD, outlined in the paper “Sunlight Has Cardiovascular Benefits Independently of Vitamin D.”
Which may well be why avoiding the sun can be as bad for you as smoking. A fact described in this Swedish study “Avoidance of sun exposure as a risk factor for major causes of death: a competing risk analysis of the Melanoma in Southern Sweden cohort”:
“Nonsmokers who avoided sun exposure had a life expectancy similar to smokers in the highest sun exposure group, indicating that avoidance of sun exposure is a risk factor for death of a similar magnitude as smoking. Compared to the highest sun exposure group, life expectancy of avoiders of sun exposure was reduced by 0.6–2.1 years. “The longer life expectancy amongst women with active sun exposure habits was related to a decrease in CVD.” 73 Here, then, is the power of that little molecule nitric oxide revealed...
WIND: Dr Kendrick is quoting the paper above. I include it here because his book is outstanding in its practical and logical approach to heart disease.
MD’s especially cardiologists, quick, without looking it up: what is the glycocalyx?
Sunlight Has Cardiovascular Benefits Independently of Vitamin D
March, 2016. Emphasis added.
...These apparently conflicting observations may be explained by confounding; fit individuals, spending more time outside in the sun will synthesise more vitamin D, which is thus a marker for health. An alternative and non-exclusive explanation, consistent with the epidemiological data on latitude and season, is that sunlight, independently of vitamin D synthesis, has cardiovascular, cerebrovascular and metabolic benefits.
...Two Scandinavian studies, initiated in the early 1990s, have provided valuable information on sun exposure and all-cause mortality... Dose dependently, the higher the sun-seeking behaviour, the lower the all-cause mortality, with those scoring 4 having half the mortality of sun-avoiders. Extrapolating from these data, the authors calculate that 3% of deaths in Sweden can be accounted for by inadequate sun.
...
Background: High blood pressure (BP) is the leading risk factor for disability adjusted life years lost globally. Epidemiological data show a correlation between increased sun exposure and reduced population BP and cardiovascular mortality. Individuals with high serum vitamin D levels are at reduced risk of hypertension, cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome, yet multiple trial data show that oral vitamin D supplementation has no effect on these endpoints.
Sunlight is a risk factor for skin cancers, but no link has been shown with increased all-cause mortality. Cohort studies from Scandinavia show a dose-dependent fall in mortality with increased sun-seeking behaviour. Skin contains significant stores of nitrogen oxides, which can be converted to NO by UV radiation and exported to the systemic circulation. Human studies show that this pathway can cause arterial vasodilatation and reduced BP. Murine studies suggest the same mechanism may reduce metabolic syndrome.
Summary: Sunlight has beneficial effects on cardiovascular risk factors independently of Vitamin D.
Key Messages: All-cause mortality should be the primary determinant of public health messages. Sunlight is a risk factor for skin cancer, but sun avoidance may carry more of a cost than benefit for overall good health
WIND: death is the price of life; sooner or later something is going to kill you. You might as well enjoy it along the way. Or you can take your daily statin poison and other meds, avoid the pleasure of the sun, hit the fast food joint, and generally be miserable. See how biased I am?
Correllation is not causation, but there are good reasons for it to be true, and sunbathing sure as heck feels good and I always feel better when I get plenty of sun. Moreover (see first article), the “science” about melanoma looks like intellectual incompetence: melanomas are counted ignoring the fact that they occur where sun exposure has not been at work.
Finally, it is my (unproven) view that cancers in general occur more in individuals with poor health habits especially nutrtion eg inflammatory and seed oil heavy diets. It seems radically unlikely that a person with a poor diet (modern diet) has the same cancer risk of any kind as a person eating whole unprocessed foods.
See also: Lies my Doctor Told Me: Medical Myths that Can Harm Your Health @AMAZON.
