I have as a pale person been a life long sun avoider. I thought that doing so was the right thing. That it was the best path for health. I may well have been wrong!
Most people are aware that during COVID those who in the early days prior to vaccines had a higher level of vitamin d had a higher chance of surviving. This was regardless of age. So much so that vitamin d pills were recommended wide scale. Except pills turned out to do next to nothing. It seems more likely that the higher vitamin d levels were a proxy for sun exposure.
Maybe we are wrong about being able to get vitamin d (which is actually a hormone) of a type that is bioavailable enough to prevent anything other than severe deficiency from supplements or food. Oral vitamin d certainly doesn’t seem to work to modulate the immune system the way our own vitamin d made from sun exposure does.
What else are we wrong about when it comes to sun exposure.
According to two studies one which originally set out to prove sun exposure in Swedish women increased their risk of death due melanoma and did pretty much the opposite and the other the UK biobank study.
Both show strong and it really seems to be very strong evidence that sun avoidance is linked to a higher risk of all cause mortality. In other words sun avoiders were just more likely to die.
I’m going to add a few excerpts from journal pieces and articles along with the relevant links and then discuss.
“UVR is a skin carcinogen, yet no studies link sun exposure to increased all-cause mortality. Epidemiological studies from the United Kingdom and Sweden link sun exposure with reduced all-cause, cardiovascular, and cancer mortality. Vitamin D synthesis is dependent on UVB exposure. Individuals with higher serum levels of vitamin D are healthier in many ways, yet multiple trials of oral vitamin D supplementation show little benefit. Growing evidence shows that sunlight has health benefits through vitamin D–independent pathways, such as photomobilization of nitric oxide from cutaneous stores with reduction in cardiovascular morbidity. Sunlight has important systemic health benefit as well as risks.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022202X2400280X
“Living in locations with higher UV levels, for example Cornwall, was associated with a lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer – 19 per cent and 12 per cent, respectively – than living in areas with lower UV levels, such as Edinburgh or Glasgow.
Sunbed use was linked to a 23 per cent lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease and a 14 per cent lower risk of death from cancer, compared to non-users. It is possible that people who use sunbeds may also seek out greater sun exposure and so this result may reflect broader sun seeking behaviour, the team says.
Those with a higher estimated UV exposure had a slightly increased risk of being diagnosed with melanoma – a type of skin cancer – but their risk of dying from the condition was not raised.”
https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2024/uv-rays-may-boost-health-in-low-sunlight-countries
“Abstract
Background
Sunlight exposure and fair skin are major determinants of human vitamin D production, but they are also risk factors for cutaneous malignant melanoma (MM). There is epidemiological evidence that all-cause mortality is related to low vitamin D levels.
Methods
We assessed the avoidance of sun exposure as a risk factor for all-cause mortality for 29 518 Swedish women in a prospective 20-year follow-up of the Melanoma in Southern Sweden (MISS) cohort. Women were recruited from 1990 to 1992 and were aged 25 to 64 years at the start of the study. We obtained detailed information at baseline on their sun exposure habits and potential confounders. Multivariable flexible parametric survival analysis was applied to the data.
Results
There were 2545 deaths amongst the 29 518 women who responded to the initial questionnaire. We found that all-cause mortality was inversely related to sun exposure habits. The mortality rate amongst avoiders of sun exposure was approximately twofold higher compared with the highest sun exposure group, resulting in excess mortality with a population attributable risk of 3%.
Conclusion
The results of this study provide observational evidence that avoiding sun exposure is a risk factor for all-cause mortality. Following sun exposure advice that is very restrictive in countries with low solar intensity might in fact be harmful to women’s health.”
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joim.12251
In other words those of us living in north of the equator climates where the UV index drops below the point where vitamin d synthesis is possible for months at a time may be harming our health by avoiding summer sun.
Advice that is sensible in higher UV index climates could actually be dangerous in darker climes. Could the health advice we have been given for decades be very, very wrong.
Note I’m not suggesting extreme sun exposure and certainly baking to the point of burning. But as with everything there is a middle ground and maybe the sun advice in the UK needs to find it
If you would like a female personal trainer, yoga teacher or Pilates instructor in Alnwick Northumberland who is well versed in different types of training including working with health issues please get in touch.
Sam Kelly Fitness 