Funny timing, I just went to a tanning salon for the first time yesterday. I asked for the weakest bed (level 1), which has the most UVB (for vitamin D production). They were shocked that I wanted to use level 1, apparently no one uses it. They also suggested starting at 5 mins instead of the 1-2 minutes I wanted to do. The machine itself has a notice saying not to go over 3 mins for the first week.
I was following the protocol from this paper, which started people at 2 mins and used low wattage UVB-heavy bulbs.
Sunbeds with UVB radiation can produce physiological levels of serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D in healthy volunteers
Unfortunately the Science Advances paper being discussed is epidemiological and doesn't distinguish between the type of bulb, length of time, and other parameters used while tanning. However it is safe to say that the average tanner cares more about getting dark than anything else.
I think there would actually be a market for vitamin D centered "healthy tanning" where only low wattage, high-UVB bulbs are used particularly in cloudy areas or where the winter is long. I'm that guessing the operating costs for that kind of business would be cheaper than your average tanning salon, too.
Interesting... What benefits does this have over vitamin D supplements?
I've seen this "optimising for some perceived negative effects" thing with toothbrushes/toothpaste, where "whitening" and stiff bristles actually just means removing more (irreplaceable) enamel from your teeth.
Many people with inflammatory disease like IBD can't absorb oral vitamin D properly
Even in healthy people, oral vitamin D is not always sufficient (there was a study done in Japan where sunlight is low but Vitamin D from fish is high - can't find it right now) and sunlight exposure might have other benefits than vitamin D anyway
Vitamin D supplements are controversial on their own.
There is ample results on better health correlated with higher levels of Vitamin D, but the reverse is far more teneous: shoving in Vitamin D isn't guaranteed to be properly absorbed, and even when it is we don't see conparable results to people producing the Vitamin D themselves.
I have issues with low vitamin D and even really high supplement doses like 10,000iu/d do nothing at all- my level keeps dropping no matter how much I supplement. Sunlight brings it up quickly but not in the winter from Nov-Jan.
Vitamin D supplements don’t work consistently across different populations. Very few (~10%) of people can absorb dietary vitamin D. If you aren’t some form of Northern European, you probably need to take at least 10 times the daily recommended dose of vitamin D to influence your levels significantly.
Stiff bristles also damage your gum more easily and can lead to gum recessions. I needed gum transplants because of this and a wrong brushing technique. For me even medium stiffness is too hard.
as a man of south asian descent growing up in massachusetts, I would find myself getting very depressed around the middle of the winter. I actually found a huge amount of relief by going into a sunbed for 2 min a month. I'd feel much better and my cravings would change from fried food to salads.
I looked into this extensively during lockdowns. There is a specific wavelength that maximises Vitamin D. And there are medically approved devices that use special fluorescent bulbs that output this. It's mainly used in Nordic countries.
I tried to find an LED strip equivalent but couldn't not - there are strips that produce a lower wavelength than UV-A but from what I remember it was too low of a nm for good vitamin D.
Could be an interesting product however ! I wanted to hand two strips in my shower and turn them on for a few minutes while I washed up during the winter.
Unfortunately even the tanning beds you were using still produce a lot of UV-A which will age your skin. And funnily enough UV-B also produces a much longer lasting tan (though slower) which would mean less return trips for people who are just looking for aesthetics
I do exactly what you are describing and it seems to work for me, from a vitamin D perspective. I started this because I read a paper stating the same health benefits were not seen from supplements as with people who got the vitamin D from sunlight. I believe that is true, but of course can not be certain.
I use the Sperti Vitamin D sunlamp at home during the winter months. It wasn't cheap but wasn't crazy expensive either and seems to be what you want (e.g. UVB).
There's a history of finding really strong correlations between vitamin D levels and (many kinds of) health, and then disappointing results for RCTs of vitamin D supplementation. There are lots of possible explanations of this, but it seems like a plausible one is that there are some good things sunlight does for you other than produce vitamin D. So I'm a little nervous about everyone eliminating all sun exposure and then taking vitamin D geltabs to compensate, even though sunlight carries some risks. (But obviously too much ionizing radiation is also a problem, and it sounds like most users of tanning beds are getting a lot of intense exposure)
I wonder how much correlation this has with exercise. Generally if you are getting good levels of sunlight, there is a good chance you are outside exercising, even if it's just walking.
After all, exercise is the undisputed God tier all-time winning champion of "Studies show that ______ is good for xyz."
I've taken up running because it's a way to get sunlight during the winter, I can run in shorts and a t shirt. I am very active, but I start getting a lot of anxiety if I don't get sunlight on my skin for a week or two.
UVA triggers the release of nitric oxide from the skin into the bloodstream. This causes blood vessels to dilate, lowering blood pressure and improving circulation.
Exposure to sunlight (or lack of it) affects our circadian rhythm and production of melatonin, which affects our sleep quality. Exposure to morning sun in particular is linked with better sleep quality, leading to better health.
> There's a history of finding really strong correlations between vitamin D levels and (many kinds of) health, and then disappointing results for RCTs of vitamin D supplementation.
This might just mean that bodies that are healthier in many other aspects are also better at managing their vitamin D stores which isn't all that surprising.
There are plenty of foods with vitamin D. You don't actually need to supplement it unless you're a vegetarian, you just need to actively include those foods in your diet.
The current argument I've read for why fair-skinned people even evolved near the North Sea and not anywhere else near the arctic is exactly that the Gulf Stream allowed a cereals-based diet rather than a meat based diet, which led to vitamin D deficiencies which caused problems in pregnancy, leading to people with fairer skin being the most likely to avoid those problems.
You definitely don't need to get your vitamin D from the sun.
I don't know where you read that fair skin is a diet adaptation and not a sunlight one, but that's wrong: fair skin is an adaptation to northern latitudes due to reduced sunlight. The majority of people of African descent in America are vitamin D deficient, but in Ghana — where there is much poorer nutrition, but more sunlight — they're not. Meanwhile, the majority of white Americans are not vitamin D deficient. [1]
Getting sufficient vitamin D takes 6x longer sun exposure for black people than for white people. [2] In northern latitudes that's pretty difficult.
My favorite one that I read about is mushrooms. If you grow them in the sun, some species allegedly acquire vitamin D. I am not sure how much nor if this is truly effective, but it gives me a good excuse to grow various mushrooms next spring.
You might be interested in the British history of Vitamin D supplementation. It all started with kids in the cities getting rickets because the pollution (smog) was that bad that they never got to see further than a metre or two during the worst of it. The way to get around was by taking the tram as that had rails to guide it through the 'pea soupers'.
So they put the kids on trains and took them off to the seaside.
But then...
The railway also allowed milk to be brought into the cities. So they added vitamin D to milk. That was how the rickets was solved. In time milk became free at school, usually it was warm by morning break, which was when it would get consumed, from mini-milk bottles, that would get reused.
I am only piecing together this history, no definitive source, unless you include my elderly neighbour. However, food history is fascinating, once you get away from celebrated brands to the unsung heroes of the vegetable aisle.
What I can't work out is why the children were so vulnerable to rickets when the adults weren't. Workers weren't being sent out to the countryside or beach to get some sun, just the kids. Rickets doesn't affect adults with grown bones, in theory, the adults should have had really painful joints and osteoporosis, but maybe this was not understood at the time.
In time the clean air zones were setup and the smog was banished to a certain extent, by which time it became uncommon to fortify milk with vitamin D. Finally we had Margaret Thatcher, famously the 'milk snatcher', for stopping free school milk.
In the UK we do get vitamin D randomly added to processed foods (what else?) and this is a scattergun approach to fortifying the population. If you don't eat processed foods then you are not going to get any of that processed food fortification goodness.
Then there are the animal corpse sources, as in oily fish and whatnot. If you eat any diet except for whole-food-plant-based vegan, then you are going to get vitamin D either through dead animal or fortification. Vegetarians just have to eat maaassivve blocks of cheese, which they will, with a few eggs and some breakfast cereal to get their vitamin D needs roughly covered. Junk-food vegans should get some vitamin D goodness from fortifications too, particularly if they consume things like 'oat milk' (as if oats have mammary glands). Pure junk food, a.k.a. 'Standard American Diet', should also be pretty good for vitamin D.
So this only really leaves the whole-food, plant-based, everything-cooked-from-scratch vegan diet as lacking, at least as far as the winter months is concerned. Was this a problem historically? I don't think so. Since people used to work the fields, they had plenty of vitamin D to carry over for winter.
Before we had 'modern day racism' in the UK, we had a situation where the aristocracy had white skin and everyone else had leathery brown skin, from working outside. White skin was proof that you didn't have to work the fields and therefore, you were higher status. Racism pre-dated racism, if you get my drift, it was mere class-based xenophobia back then. To be 'truly white' you had to have no tan.
Since meat was hard to come by, peasants were 95% vegan by default, yet working the fields, so vitamin D deficiency was not a problem, for the 1% aristocracy (since they had their oily fish, red meat and dairy) or for the 99% that had to spend lots of time outdoors.
I am not sure where you are coming from regarding the Gulf Stream and cereals. The Fertile Crescent was where farming began for Europe, with wheat not actually growing in the UK and other grains (barley) being the chosen grain. It was only with the Norman Conquest that wheat made it to the UK.
When the Romans made it to the UK they were perplexed at what they found. There were two tribes, the nomadic cattle types and the hill fort living grain growers that were not nomadic. The hill forts got in the way of the migration routes between pastures. The Romans were disgusted by the milk drinking since nobody would do that in Rome, where everyone was lactose intolerant, unlike the Celts.
There is probably stuff we don’t know. For example, some people sneeze when they look or are exposed to the sun (for me, usually in the morning). There is still no scientific explanation for why it happens.
There are no devices that can produce a full-spectrum light like the one you get from the sun. So my suggestion would be to go outside and breathe instead of sitting in a box.
Today is the first time in December my town gets any sunlight and boy am I excited. Not because we are that far north, it's still the height of the winter after all, it was just shit weather.
Excessive UV exposure in general not a great time, tanning is just a way of speedrunning damage unless done in very short intervals.
I'll never understand some people's fetishization with getting darker via tanning though. Theres nothing wrong with light skin, its only a few western countries that seem to have a weird fetishization with cooking your skin longterm to get darker short term.
Meanwhile most other countries and peoples are willing to damage their skin in whole other ways trying to get the opposite.
"wealthy people can stay inside while poor people work in the sun" vs. "wealthy people can vacation in sunny countries while poor people stay home in the cold"
The US has 200 million white people that live in a mostly warm and sunny climate. Women often tan before vacations or events so they look better in the pictures.
The popularity of tanning is attributed to fashion designer Coco Chanel, who accidentally got too much sun on a Mediterranean cruise in 1923. Since she was a fashion icon, this made the tanned look fashionable.
As an aside, the chemistry behind UV damage is interesting. You can think of DNA as a sequence of four letters: C, G, A, and T. If there are two neighboring T's, UV can move a bond, linking the two T's together (i.e. thymine dimerization). If you're in the sun, each skin cell gets 50-100 of these pairs created per second. Enzymes usually fix these errors, but sometimes the errors will cause problems during DNA replication and you can end up with mutations. Enough of the wrong mutations can cause skin cancer. So wear sunscreen!
It's too late to edit my previous comment, but I wanted to add one more random tanning fact: UV releases β-endorphin so tanning is literally addictive, to the point that naloxone will cause withdrawal symptoms, at least in mice: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(14)00611-4
I’m naturally pretty pale and don’t get much sunlight, I feel like I look like shit unless I get just a little bit of tan. What most people would consider just a healthy looking “baseline”. It also puts me in a better mood although that may be entirely psychological.
When I was younger I used to intentionally tan for short durations, but now I realize that’s harmful so I just embrace the cave gollum look
I am white as paper, probably one of the palest people and I live in Asia and often get comment that I have the dream skin. While back at home my parents were teasing me about being a ghost and doctors asking am I sick. Interesting how it changes on cultural basis
The mood is probably part light and part vitamin D. The latter can be supplemented. The former can be reproduced with a full spectrum bright lamp or brief sun exposure in the morning.
Possibly. Its actually insanely frustrating as someone pale that most western brands rarely approach the level of lightness I need to match my skin, and the few that come close often are almost always rather saturated, highly warm tones.
They almost always just stick to tones within the realm of pantone's skin guide, treating it more like a skin bible instead.
Haus labs and their triclone in 000 is one of the few foundations I've ever had match.
Tanning causes melanocyte production in your epidermis. Melanotan causes it throughout your body in an uncontrolled manner. In a wide variety of unrelated tissues.
It can lead to uncontrolled melanocyte production that doesn't shut off - cancer. Aggressive melanomas.
It disrupts normal hormone signalling which may downstream cause a variety of deleterious health effects and disease states.
There are also crazy reports of kidney failure, which may or may not be caused by the drug.
But that's the thing, it's not about "more melanin", but rather about something like:
The grass on the other side has a different amount of melanin be harder-to-achieve and thus more desirable because it previously signaled belonging to the higher socio-economical strata.
It's indeed, baffling, ignoring health consequences: Get fashionably darker skin now: Make your skin look (reasonably universally) irreversibly uglier/older gradually over time. This is perhaps the most controllable way to affect how old you look.
It becomes unmissable once someone is in their 30s: Some still have youthful skin, while others are wrinkly, splotched, and saggy.
I think people way over cook themselves. The economics and amplified power of tanning beds at salons push people to highly overdose.
I estimated that 1 minute of artificial tanning is comparable to the 10-15 minutes of sun a day that is recommended. But has the benefit of the whole body's largest organ kicking in for the health benefits. So I tan at home for 1 minute a couple times a week. You can't do this economically with a salon.
I don't really get tan, just a little more color. But when I do get any lengthy sun time due to outdoor activities, I tan quickly instead of burn.
I love the idea that we believe that we can replicate all of the natural processes involved in getting a tan, and to such a precision that we can then speed up the process 10 fold, and that we can fit it all into a single unit that can be wheeled in and out of the room.
Unless of course our calculations are a bit off, then we accidentally created a bed version of the wrong chalice from raiders of the lost ark, but I think it's fine.
Strong reaction? I don’t know anyone who would believe that.
I don’t think we need to replicate everything about nature to incorporate what we know about nature, ourselves, and the practical details of our lives.
I have bright LEDs around my ceilings, hidden by cove molding, turning the whole ceiling into soft but bright reflected daylight.
It doesn’t need to replicate a real summer day outside to improve my mood and avoid depression in winter. Much better than ordinary indoor lighting.
Most people take some kind of supplement or medication that doesn’t replicate pre-technological natural conditions but provide benefits.
Improving our respective conditions, in the artificial world we live in, can involve quirky adaptations for each of us.
Nude? :) I do think getting a bit of sun everywhere has to enhance the benefits. Thus my solution.
I also walk a lot when I can and weather allows. I started walking with a weighted vest occasionally and it was like my body went into some kind of good shock. I was surprised how little soreness or fatigue I felt even the first time, after a two hour walk wearing 20 lbs. And the physical energy boost was dramatic. I switched to 40 lbs the second time and since.
> I estimated that 1 minute of artificial tanning is comparable to the 10-15 minutes of sun a day that is recommended.
That doesn't seem right. If you only tan in a strong tanning bed for 10 min (or 15 min in a weaker one), it's equivalent to only about an hour in the real sun around noon. I.e. if you've only been going to a tanning bed, you'll start to burn outdoors shortly after that. (And I'm talking about high-UVB bulbs that develop the long-lasting tan that protects against sunburn, just like the sun itself generates.)
So the difference factor is more like 4-6x, not 10-15x. Honestly, 15x would be insane. Tanning beds aren't as strong as some fearmongerers suggest. And that's assuming full-body exposure.
When you say you artificially tan at home for 1 minute, how? Did you buy your own entire tanning bed? Because if you use the small portable devices (like a Sperti), they're providing only a tiny fraction of what a tanning bed provides, since they're so small.
I think your calculations are good, that I am operating with a significant time safety margin.
I balanced going (1) “short” on time, (2) “long” on body coverage, and (3) with consistent exposure schedule, for best steady-state body adaptation (I.e. for both high repair and positive health responses). For plausibly higher safety plus higher benefit on all three counts.
We can do better than "known for decades, on a layman's level" folklore and the answer actually isn't as straightforward ([1]). Recently there's even been discussion (by a Brit scientist I believe but I have no reference) on skin cancer vs more serious forms of cancer, and also about skin pigmentation playing a role here.
I actually live in southern Europe and most of my friends who are >35 and have been out and about for most of their lives do indeed look much older than they are.
I think that’s because locals have some level of adaptation to their region. In Australia, you can really see how the high levels of sunshine affect the Northern Europe descendants who live there today. Some 30 yo women look easily 40.
"known" is the wrong word. Laymen know a lot of things, like ingesting lead, radium, mercury and arsenic. Up until a couple of years ago, people "knew" that one glass of wine a day was healthy, when infact every drop is poisonous to the body.
In reverse, people thought (and too many still "know") that MSG and pasteurization is bad.
Don't use the word know, when in fact you mean "assume".
Is MSG not bad for you in the way aspartame is not bad for you? I totally get that MSG is naturally present in dashi but the chemistry of dashi (a very messy and complex mix of substances) vs purified msg is going to be different, and the concentrations the japanese consume food containing dashi are very different to the way UPFs and chinese restaurants gratuitously smother your food in it. MSG is to many cuisines what butter is to western cuisine (ie moar is always bettah)
A glass of wine a day is within epsilon of the most healthy possible option. You're making this out as if this is a big shift, but it isn't. There are just huge error bars on the measurements relative to the effect of the intervention.
There was this lady who started going to the tanning salon across the street from my place. In 4-5 months her skin had turned from pale white into tanned leather. It was shocking watching this happen.
The UVB portion of sunlight indirectly increases dopamine levels. You find it mainly near noon-day sunlight, and tanning beds. So the feel-good effects may encourage users to come back for more.
The UV damage from tanning beds has been well documented for decades, but what's novel here is the genetic methylation analysis showing accelerated aging at the DNA level.
What's wild to me is the economics. Tanning salons charge $30-50/month to give you skin cancer. Meanwhile vitamin D supplements cost $10/year and achieve the same health benefit people claim to seek from tanning.
The only rational argument I've heard for controlled UV exposure is building a base tan before vacation to prevent burning. But even then, 1-2 minutes in a low-wattage bed would suffice - not the 20+ minute sessions people actually do.
A Google search for vitamin d results in ads, ahem "sponsored results", for 180 servings for $27, which is about $55 for a full year assuming it's one serving per day, which is the same decimal order of magnitude as $10 (but, I suppose, since we are on HN, is three or four orders of magnitude in binary)
80-90% of the visible signs of ageing come from the sun. This is why, in older people, you'll find their body generally looks younger than their face. This is because clothes protected their body from the sun, but their faces were fully exposed.
Always wear sunscreen on your hands, face and neck every time you go outside. If you're the type of HN'er that is on the computer all day and rarely goes outside, doing this on the few occasions you do will take away one of the only opportunities the sun will have to age you.
A lot of people are already vitamin D deficient and avoiding sun or using sunscreen more will make it worse. The health risks and consequences are much greater than that of sun exposure, which is likely why sun exposure decreases cancer risk and mortality rates substantially, despite the increased risk of skin cancer.
looking young is a fine goal, but this advice is too general on a forum like this. The actual UV index varies wildly based on location and time of year.
Your advice would be crazy in seattle or london for example. Except summer time, or if one works outdoors.
You recommend I put on sunscreen when it’s cloudy, i can’t see the sun, and the weather app shows a UV index of 3? You did say “every time” lol. I’ve noticed people in this thread (not you specifically) don’t have the capacity for nuance on this subject. It’s baffling to me.
Questions people should ask themselves:
- how long will i be outside?
- is it early morning or early evening? if so sunscreen is pointless.
- what is the peak UV index in my location today? is it 2 or 11?
- am i genetically predisposed to skin cancer, or have very light skin?
Although I think the more interesting question is whether sunbed use increases or decreases overall mortality. The only study I can find is Lindqvist's:
Overall, sunbed use reduced the all-cause mortality by a ratio of 0.77 or 0.87 depending on the model used. It increased the risk of developing MM, and the risk of dying from MM, although all-cause mortality was not increased even in patients diagnosed with MM. (This seems to be because there is a very low overall risk of MM mortality, but UV light exposure seems to provide a greater overall health benefit than the small risk of increased MM risk).
"The young tanning bed users had more skin mutations than people twice their age, especially in their lower backs, an area that does not get much damage from sunlight but has a great deal of exposure from tanning beds."
So in other areas than the lower back, everyone - tan bed users or not - have these supposed seeds of melanoma as well? And that is for a much larger area of the skin than the one mentioned.
Also I wonder about the quote that a mutated cell can never go back. The immune system could kill the mutated cells and thereby promote the unmutated ones. Though nothing is perfect of course. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/jan/analysis-protective-lung...
> The immune system could kill the mutated cells and thereby promote the unmutated ones.
This happens all the time. The mutated cells we see are the ones that immune system couldn't detect and kill. Fortunately they are still overwhelmingly non-cancerous, but unfortunately some might be.
Yes I agree, I was just responding the article's "“We cannot reverse a mutation once it occurs, ..." I don't think that is entirely accurate. Also, I think it is a dynamic process, so even cells the immune system hasn't killed yet could be found later. Or the mutation could cause other deviancies that will make the cell uncompetitive with healthy cells. But it is a slow process - it takes years for former smokers' lung cancer risk to return to near that of never smokers. And it probably never gets there - some mutated cells may never be detectable and there's clearly also a threshold beyond which the cancer is irreversible, at least without intervention.
If you travel around you can see with your own eyes that countries that have both A) more sun and B) culture of intentional exposure (e.g. at the beach) people by the age they're 40 have on average noticeably worse skin. More wrinkles, more dark patches etc.
Its like everyone's arguing we should optimally live in darkness. As if 1. Humans didnt evolve living outdoors, 2. Everyone ages at the same rate 3. If they did, no one would ever get MM again. Like many things across the universe, too much of a good thing becomes bad. And "too much" varies considerably from one individual to the next. And no one in their 80s who avoided exposure to the sun is without wrinkles.
I live in Ireland, there's practically 0 opportunity to get exposed to the sun unless you work outdoors, and even then only your face and hands and perhaps forearms get exposed. I just take vitamin D tablets.
Also I know UV goes through clouds, but when its raining all the time you tend to stay indoors and only go outside with raincoat / umbrella.
Melanotan makes your skin react to light more effectively and you can get a full tan quite quickly with it (even in a few days). I don't know whether that means it ages you less because it takes less UV exposure to get a good tan with it or if it has some other adverse side effect. But I have tried it once and it is definitely effective.
I assume both is unhealthy, but I also like to be tanned and take the risk. Preferably from safe sun, but when not possible I’m debating tanning bed vs Melatonan and I haven’t found evidence.
In my experience, people who tan know this but the argument is always they don’t care it’s part of life and it’s better to just enjoy now than spend time worrying about looking wrinkly in the future, because what’s the point of being old and having smooth perfect skin?
Fucking stupid, there is nothing better in life than looking young and beautiful forever IMO.
Most people can barely think a month ahead, they will wake up one day and be like oh shit why do I look so old and panic hard and do all sorts of surgeries, skin creams etc. nonsense while they could have just avoided the sun or used the suncreen..
Most people thinking aging is something that happens to other people, but that they will always pass for 20 something. Then they get offended when you correctly guess their age in the late 30s or 40s.
After workout, i sit in the mild sun each morning before having my breakfast and have done so for many years now. I live near Himalayas and sun is always there, except for some weeks of winter.
Funny timing, I just went to a tanning salon for the first time yesterday. I asked for the weakest bed (level 1), which has the most UVB (for vitamin D production). They were shocked that I wanted to use level 1, apparently no one uses it. They also suggested starting at 5 mins instead of the 1-2 minutes I wanted to do. The machine itself has a notice saying not to go over 3 mins for the first week.
I was following the protocol from this paper, which started people at 2 mins and used low wattage UVB-heavy bulbs.
Sunbeds with UVB radiation can produce physiological levels of serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D in healthy volunteers
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5821157/
Unfortunately the Science Advances paper being discussed is epidemiological and doesn't distinguish between the type of bulb, length of time, and other parameters used while tanning. However it is safe to say that the average tanner cares more about getting dark than anything else.
I think there would actually be a market for vitamin D centered "healthy tanning" where only low wattage, high-UVB bulbs are used particularly in cloudy areas or where the winter is long. I'm that guessing the operating costs for that kind of business would be cheaper than your average tanning salon, too.
Interesting... What benefits does this have over vitamin D supplements?
I've seen this "optimising for some perceived negative effects" thing with toothbrushes/toothpaste, where "whitening" and stiff bristles actually just means removing more (irreplaceable) enamel from your teeth.
Many people with inflammatory disease like IBD can't absorb oral vitamin D properly
Even in healthy people, oral vitamin D is not always sufficient (there was a study done in Japan where sunlight is low but Vitamin D from fish is high - can't find it right now) and sunlight exposure might have other benefits than vitamin D anyway
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022202X2...
Vitamin D supplements are controversial on their own.
There is ample results on better health correlated with higher levels of Vitamin D, but the reverse is far more teneous: shoving in Vitamin D isn't guaranteed to be properly absorbed, and even when it is we don't see conparable results to people producing the Vitamin D themselves.
An example: https://academic.oup.com/jbmr/article/38/10/1391/7610360
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I have issues with low vitamin D and even really high supplement doses like 10,000iu/d do nothing at all- my level keeps dropping no matter how much I supplement. Sunlight brings it up quickly but not in the winter from Nov-Jan.
Vitamin D supplements don’t work consistently across different populations. Very few (~10%) of people can absorb dietary vitamin D. If you aren’t some form of Northern European, you probably need to take at least 10 times the daily recommended dose of vitamin D to influence your levels significantly.
Most people need sun!
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Stiff bristles also damage your gum more easily and can lead to gum recessions. I needed gum transplants because of this and a wrong brushing technique. For me even medium stiffness is too hard.
What's old is new again:
https://img.ifunny.co/images/5ab4dda29b9dd88acc439076537e0c4...
as a man of south asian descent growing up in massachusetts, I would find myself getting very depressed around the middle of the winter. I actually found a huge amount of relief by going into a sunbed for 2 min a month. I'd feel much better and my cravings would change from fried food to salads.
That is incredibly short! Was it not possible to get a special lightbulb for your room to give you more UV light to produce Vit D?
I looked into this extensively during lockdowns. There is a specific wavelength that maximises Vitamin D. And there are medically approved devices that use special fluorescent bulbs that output this. It's mainly used in Nordic countries.
I tried to find an LED strip equivalent but couldn't not - there are strips that produce a lower wavelength than UV-A but from what I remember it was too low of a nm for good vitamin D.
Could be an interesting product however ! I wanted to hand two strips in my shower and turn them on for a few minutes while I washed up during the winter.
Unfortunately even the tanning beds you were using still produce a lot of UV-A which will age your skin. And funnily enough UV-B also produces a much longer lasting tan (though slower) which would mean less return trips for people who are just looking for aesthetics
I do exactly what you are describing and it seems to work for me, from a vitamin D perspective. I started this because I read a paper stating the same health benefits were not seen from supplements as with people who got the vitamin D from sunlight. I believe that is true, but of course can not be certain.
I use the Sperti Vitamin D sunlamp at home during the winter months. It wasn't cheap but wasn't crazy expensive either and seems to be what you want (e.g. UVB).
It's $640.
https://www.sperti.com/product/sperti-vitamin-d-light-box/
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There's a history of finding really strong correlations between vitamin D levels and (many kinds of) health, and then disappointing results for RCTs of vitamin D supplementation. There are lots of possible explanations of this, but it seems like a plausible one is that there are some good things sunlight does for you other than produce vitamin D. So I'm a little nervous about everyone eliminating all sun exposure and then taking vitamin D geltabs to compensate, even though sunlight carries some risks. (But obviously too much ionizing radiation is also a problem, and it sounds like most users of tanning beds are getting a lot of intense exposure)
I wonder how much correlation this has with exercise. Generally if you are getting good levels of sunlight, there is a good chance you are outside exercising, even if it's just walking.
After all, exercise is the undisputed God tier all-time winning champion of "Studies show that ______ is good for xyz."
I've taken up running because it's a way to get sunlight during the winter, I can run in shorts and a t shirt. I am very active, but I start getting a lot of anxiety if I don't get sunlight on my skin for a week or two.
I remember a study where they shone light on the back of the knee to control for this.
While I believe there are many benefits of being outside and exercising, there does appear to be specific benefits to sun-like UV exposure.
Also gives you a brief respite from sitting in a climate-controlled environment and staring at screens.
UVA triggers the release of nitric oxide from the skin into the bloodstream. This causes blood vessels to dilate, lowering blood pressure and improving circulation.
Exposure to sunlight (or lack of it) affects our circadian rhythm and production of melatonin, which affects our sleep quality. Exposure to morning sun in particular is linked with better sleep quality, leading to better health.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12502225/
> There's a history of finding really strong correlations between vitamin D levels and (many kinds of) health, and then disappointing results for RCTs of vitamin D supplementation.
This might just mean that bodies that are healthier in many other aspects are also better at managing their vitamin D stores which isn't all that surprising.
Some of the positive sunlight exposure benefits are trivial to see.
- running around outside, because physical activity if healthy
- spending an afternoon in the company of good friends or family
- gardening, which can produce veggies that are pesticide free
Not everything is a biochemical direct benefit of the sun’s rays. Some of the positive effects are a few steps removed.
There are plenty of foods with vitamin D. You don't actually need to supplement it unless you're a vegetarian, you just need to actively include those foods in your diet.
The current argument I've read for why fair-skinned people even evolved near the North Sea and not anywhere else near the arctic is exactly that the Gulf Stream allowed a cereals-based diet rather than a meat based diet, which led to vitamin D deficiencies which caused problems in pregnancy, leading to people with fairer skin being the most likely to avoid those problems.
You definitely don't need to get your vitamin D from the sun.
I don't know where you read that fair skin is a diet adaptation and not a sunlight one, but that's wrong: fair skin is an adaptation to northern latitudes due to reduced sunlight. The majority of people of African descent in America are vitamin D deficient, but in Ghana — where there is much poorer nutrition, but more sunlight — they're not. Meanwhile, the majority of white Americans are not vitamin D deficient. [1]
Getting sufficient vitamin D takes 6x longer sun exposure for black people than for white people. [2] In northern latitudes that's pretty difficult.
1: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7913332/
2: https://news.feinberg.northwestern.edu/2011/09/20/vitamin-d/
> There are plenty of foods with vitamin D.
My favorite one that I read about is mushrooms. If you grow them in the sun, some species allegedly acquire vitamin D. I am not sure how much nor if this is truly effective, but it gives me a good excuse to grow various mushrooms next spring.
You might be interested in the British history of Vitamin D supplementation. It all started with kids in the cities getting rickets because the pollution (smog) was that bad that they never got to see further than a metre or two during the worst of it. The way to get around was by taking the tram as that had rails to guide it through the 'pea soupers'.
So they put the kids on trains and took them off to the seaside.
But then...
The railway also allowed milk to be brought into the cities. So they added vitamin D to milk. That was how the rickets was solved. In time milk became free at school, usually it was warm by morning break, which was when it would get consumed, from mini-milk bottles, that would get reused.
I am only piecing together this history, no definitive source, unless you include my elderly neighbour. However, food history is fascinating, once you get away from celebrated brands to the unsung heroes of the vegetable aisle.
What I can't work out is why the children were so vulnerable to rickets when the adults weren't. Workers weren't being sent out to the countryside or beach to get some sun, just the kids. Rickets doesn't affect adults with grown bones, in theory, the adults should have had really painful joints and osteoporosis, but maybe this was not understood at the time.
In time the clean air zones were setup and the smog was banished to a certain extent, by which time it became uncommon to fortify milk with vitamin D. Finally we had Margaret Thatcher, famously the 'milk snatcher', for stopping free school milk.
In the UK we do get vitamin D randomly added to processed foods (what else?) and this is a scattergun approach to fortifying the population. If you don't eat processed foods then you are not going to get any of that processed food fortification goodness.
Then there are the animal corpse sources, as in oily fish and whatnot. If you eat any diet except for whole-food-plant-based vegan, then you are going to get vitamin D either through dead animal or fortification. Vegetarians just have to eat maaassivve blocks of cheese, which they will, with a few eggs and some breakfast cereal to get their vitamin D needs roughly covered. Junk-food vegans should get some vitamin D goodness from fortifications too, particularly if they consume things like 'oat milk' (as if oats have mammary glands). Pure junk food, a.k.a. 'Standard American Diet', should also be pretty good for vitamin D.
So this only really leaves the whole-food, plant-based, everything-cooked-from-scratch vegan diet as lacking, at least as far as the winter months is concerned. Was this a problem historically? I don't think so. Since people used to work the fields, they had plenty of vitamin D to carry over for winter.
Before we had 'modern day racism' in the UK, we had a situation where the aristocracy had white skin and everyone else had leathery brown skin, from working outside. White skin was proof that you didn't have to work the fields and therefore, you were higher status. Racism pre-dated racism, if you get my drift, it was mere class-based xenophobia back then. To be 'truly white' you had to have no tan.
Since meat was hard to come by, peasants were 95% vegan by default, yet working the fields, so vitamin D deficiency was not a problem, for the 1% aristocracy (since they had their oily fish, red meat and dairy) or for the 99% that had to spend lots of time outdoors.
I am not sure where you are coming from regarding the Gulf Stream and cereals. The Fertile Crescent was where farming began for Europe, with wheat not actually growing in the UK and other grains (barley) being the chosen grain. It was only with the Norman Conquest that wheat made it to the UK.
When the Romans made it to the UK they were perplexed at what they found. There were two tribes, the nomadic cattle types and the hill fort living grain growers that were not nomadic. The hill forts got in the way of the migration routes between pastures. The Romans were disgusted by the milk drinking since nobody would do that in Rome, where everyone was lactose intolerant, unlike the Celts.
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There is probably stuff we don’t know. For example, some people sneeze when they look or are exposed to the sun (for me, usually in the morning). There is still no scientific explanation for why it happens.
There are no devices that can produce a full-spectrum light like the one you get from the sun. So my suggestion would be to go outside and breathe instead of sitting in a box.
Here’s a podcast on this:
https://www.artofmanliness.com/health-fitness/health/podcast...
There are multiple studies showing infrared enhances mythocondria function, and this is already used therapeutically.
Today is the first time in December my town gets any sunlight and boy am I excited. Not because we are that far north, it's still the height of the winter after all, it was just shit weather.
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Excessive UV exposure in general not a great time, tanning is just a way of speedrunning damage unless done in very short intervals.
I'll never understand some people's fetishization with getting darker via tanning though. Theres nothing wrong with light skin, its only a few western countries that seem to have a weird fetishization with cooking your skin longterm to get darker short term. Meanwhile most other countries and peoples are willing to damage their skin in whole other ways trying to get the opposite.
They're both imitations of status symbols
"wealthy people can stay inside while poor people work in the sun" vs. "wealthy people can vacation in sunny countries while poor people stay home in the cold"
The US has 200 million white people that live in a mostly warm and sunny climate. Women often tan before vacations or events so they look better in the pictures.
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The popularity of tanning is attributed to fashion designer Coco Chanel, who accidentally got too much sun on a Mediterranean cruise in 1923. Since she was a fashion icon, this made the tanned look fashionable.
As an aside, the chemistry behind UV damage is interesting. You can think of DNA as a sequence of four letters: C, G, A, and T. If there are two neighboring T's, UV can move a bond, linking the two T's together (i.e. thymine dimerization). If you're in the sun, each skin cell gets 50-100 of these pairs created per second. Enzymes usually fix these errors, but sometimes the errors will cause problems during DNA replication and you can end up with mutations. Enough of the wrong mutations can cause skin cancer. So wear sunscreen!
https://pdb101.rcsb.org/motm/91
It's too late to edit my previous comment, but I wanted to add one more random tanning fact: UV releases β-endorphin so tanning is literally addictive, to the point that naloxone will cause withdrawal symptoms, at least in mice: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(14)00611-4
I’m naturally pretty pale and don’t get much sunlight, I feel like I look like shit unless I get just a little bit of tan. What most people would consider just a healthy looking “baseline”. It also puts me in a better mood although that may be entirely psychological.
When I was younger I used to intentionally tan for short durations, but now I realize that’s harmful so I just embrace the cave gollum look
I am white as paper, probably one of the palest people and I live in Asia and often get comment that I have the dream skin. While back at home my parents were teasing me about being a ghost and doctors asking am I sick. Interesting how it changes on cultural basis
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The mood is probably part light and part vitamin D. The latter can be supplemented. The former can be reproduced with a full spectrum bright lamp or brief sun exposure in the morning.
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Just eat/drink a lot of carrots instead.
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Why don't you just spend time outside a little bit?
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Cosmetic companies to blame? In the east, they fetishize white / fair skin, while in the west they fetishize dark skin.
Possibly. Its actually insanely frustrating as someone pale that most western brands rarely approach the level of lightness I need to match my skin, and the few that come close often are almost always rather saturated, highly warm tones.
They almost always just stick to tones within the realm of pantone's skin guide, treating it more like a skin bible instead.
Haus labs and their triclone in 000 is one of the few foundations I've ever had match.
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No, people who do it are to blame.
You can always use Melanotan II instead to get a good tan while also increasing libido and sleep quality; )
BEWARE.
Melanotan is dangerous, sadly.
Tanning causes melanocyte production in your epidermis. Melanotan causes it throughout your body in an uncontrolled manner. In a wide variety of unrelated tissues.
It can lead to uncontrolled melanocyte production that doesn't shut off - cancer. Aggressive melanomas.
It disrupts normal hormone signalling which may downstream cause a variety of deleterious health effects and disease states.
There are also crazy reports of kidney failure, which may or may not be caused by the drug.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7148395/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23121206/
https://www.actasdermo.org/en-eruptive-dysplastic-nevi-follo...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanotan_II says it is banned in the United States, and anything you get on the black market isn't guaranteed to be pure.
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I’m pretty sure Melanotan carries the risk of retinal pigmentation, or at least that was the case with the original. Not sure if II is different.
> I'll never understand some people's fetishization with getting darker
> ...
> Meanwhile most other countries and peoples are willing to damage their skin in whole other ways trying to get the opposite.
The grass has more melanin on the other side.
But that's the thing, it's not about "more melanin", but rather about something like:
The grass on the other side has a different amount of melanin be harder-to-achieve and thus more desirable because it previously signaled belonging to the higher socio-economical strata.
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It's indeed, baffling, ignoring health consequences: Get fashionably darker skin now: Make your skin look (reasonably universally) irreversibly uglier/older gradually over time. This is perhaps the most controllable way to affect how old you look.
It becomes unmissable once someone is in their 30s: Some still have youthful skin, while others are wrinkly, splotched, and saggy.
I often see women in their mid 20s looking like 35 simply because of the skin.
I saw a paper that shows that peole find contrasts attractive. I can't find it, but here's the same finding for salads https://www.sciencedirect.com:5037/science/article/abs/pii/S...
Blond hair with a tan or black hair with white skin are more contrasting so look more striking.
> I'll never understand some people's fetishization with getting darker via tanning though
While some darker skin people want to have lighter skin.
Maybe at some deeper level it’s something about being human. We always want something the other person has
I'm pretty sure it's just cultural. They don't want to be fairer, or darker, they want the social status that it, allegedly, signals.
> We always want something the other person has
This. Same with curly vs straight hair.
The book by Dr. Seuss, “The Star Bellied Sneetches” explorers the phenomenon.
And what's funny is Western countries idolise tanned skin whereas Asian countries tend to idolise lighter skin.
I've never seen anyone look better after tanning.
I think people way over cook themselves. The economics and amplified power of tanning beds at salons push people to highly overdose.
I estimated that 1 minute of artificial tanning is comparable to the 10-15 minutes of sun a day that is recommended. But has the benefit of the whole body's largest organ kicking in for the health benefits. So I tan at home for 1 minute a couple times a week. You can't do this economically with a salon.
I don't really get tan, just a little more color. But when I do get any lengthy sun time due to outdoor activities, I tan quickly instead of burn.
I love the idea that we believe that we can replicate all of the natural processes involved in getting a tan, and to such a precision that we can then speed up the process 10 fold, and that we can fit it all into a single unit that can be wheeled in and out of the room.
Unless of course our calculations are a bit off, then we accidentally created a bed version of the wrong chalice from raiders of the lost ark, but I think it's fine.
Replicate the natural processes? It's literally just UV light.
UV comes in an huge variety of strengths outdoors.
There are no calculations to be a "bit off". It's just strong UV. You're making it sound a lot more complicated than it is.
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> I love the idea that we believe…
Strong reaction? I don’t know anyone who would believe that.
I don’t think we need to replicate everything about nature to incorporate what we know about nature, ourselves, and the practical details of our lives.
I have bright LEDs around my ceilings, hidden by cove molding, turning the whole ceiling into soft but bright reflected daylight.
It doesn’t need to replicate a real summer day outside to improve my mood and avoid depression in winter. Much better than ordinary indoor lighting.
Most people take some kind of supplement or medication that doesn’t replicate pre-technological natural conditions but provide benefits.
Improving our respective conditions, in the artificial world we live in, can involve quirky adaptations for each of us.
I just walk outdoors.
Nude? :) I do think getting a bit of sun everywhere has to enhance the benefits. Thus my solution.
I also walk a lot when I can and weather allows. I started walking with a weighted vest occasionally and it was like my body went into some kind of good shock. I was surprised how little soreness or fatigue I felt even the first time, after a two hour walk wearing 20 lbs. And the physical energy boost was dramatic. I switched to 40 lbs the second time and since.
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This isn't super useful for UV exposure in winter, due to low angle of the sun, clouds, and of course clothing.
I just take vitamins if needed, saves time and no cancer.
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> I estimated that 1 minute of artificial tanning is comparable to the 10-15 minutes of sun a day that is recommended.
That doesn't seem right. If you only tan in a strong tanning bed for 10 min (or 15 min in a weaker one), it's equivalent to only about an hour in the real sun around noon. I.e. if you've only been going to a tanning bed, you'll start to burn outdoors shortly after that. (And I'm talking about high-UVB bulbs that develop the long-lasting tan that protects against sunburn, just like the sun itself generates.)
So the difference factor is more like 4-6x, not 10-15x. Honestly, 15x would be insane. Tanning beds aren't as strong as some fearmongerers suggest. And that's assuming full-body exposure.
When you say you artificially tan at home for 1 minute, how? Did you buy your own entire tanning bed? Because if you use the small portable devices (like a Sperti), they're providing only a tiny fraction of what a tanning bed provides, since they're so small.
I have a standing tanning machine.
I think your calculations are good, that I am operating with a significant time safety margin.
I balanced going (1) “short” on time, (2) “long” on body coverage, and (3) with consistent exposure schedule, for best steady-state body adaptation (I.e. for both high repair and positive health responses). For plausibly higher safety plus higher benefit on all three counts.
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how do you tan at home? you bought some UVB bulbs?
A standing tanning machine.
I suppose the specifics are novel enough to warrant a paper, but on a layman’s level it has been known for decades that UV ages your skin rapidly.
We can do better than "known for decades, on a layman's level" folklore and the answer actually isn't as straightforward ([1]). Recently there's even been discussion (by a Brit scientist I believe but I have no reference) on skin cancer vs more serious forms of cancer, and also about skin pigmentation playing a role here.
[1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022202X2...
Yeah of course scientists can still learn more, but at some point the layman can’t really get any new information from the press release.
That link does not refute the claim that UV ages your skin, which it unquestionably does.
I don’t think it’s super straightforward. Another thing laymen know: Most younger people in southern Europe don’t look old.
I actually live in southern Europe and most of my friends who are >35 and have been out and about for most of their lives do indeed look much older than they are.
I think that’s because locals have some level of adaptation to their region. In Australia, you can really see how the high levels of sunshine affect the Northern Europe descendants who live there today. Some 30 yo women look easily 40.
"known" is the wrong word. Laymen know a lot of things, like ingesting lead, radium, mercury and arsenic. Up until a couple of years ago, people "knew" that one glass of wine a day was healthy, when infact every drop is poisonous to the body.
In reverse, people thought (and too many still "know") that MSG and pasteurization is bad.
Don't use the word know, when in fact you mean "assume".
Is MSG not bad for you in the way aspartame is not bad for you? I totally get that MSG is naturally present in dashi but the chemistry of dashi (a very messy and complex mix of substances) vs purified msg is going to be different, and the concentrations the japanese consume food containing dashi are very different to the way UPFs and chinese restaurants gratuitously smother your food in it. MSG is to many cuisines what butter is to western cuisine (ie moar is always bettah)
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A glass of wine a day is within epsilon of the most healthy possible option. You're making this out as if this is a big shift, but it isn't. There are just huge error bars on the measurements relative to the effect of the intervention.
There was this lady who started going to the tanning salon across the street from my place. In 4-5 months her skin had turned from pale white into tanned leather. It was shocking watching this happen.
Yeah very similar story. A friend of my wife's started tanning and now she looks like an old bag of brown leather. Too much is never enough for her.
Isn’t that precisely the expected outcome of going to a tanning salon?
Shockingly unnatural, I assume, not shocking scientifically.
The UVB portion of sunlight indirectly increases dopamine levels. You find it mainly near noon-day sunlight, and tanning beds. So the feel-good effects may encourage users to come back for more.
Frequent tanning bed users all have this addict level rationalization for using them when everyone knows it's harmful.
The UV damage from tanning beds has been well documented for decades, but what's novel here is the genetic methylation analysis showing accelerated aging at the DNA level.
What's wild to me is the economics. Tanning salons charge $30-50/month to give you skin cancer. Meanwhile vitamin D supplements cost $10/year and achieve the same health benefit people claim to seek from tanning.
The only rational argument I've heard for controlled UV exposure is building a base tan before vacation to prevent burning. But even then, 1-2 minutes in a low-wattage bed would suffice - not the 20+ minute sessions people actually do.
Where are you seeing vitamin D supplements for $10/year? That’s several orders of magnitude less than most OTC supplements.
A Google search for vitamin d results in ads, ahem "sponsored results", for 180 servings for $27, which is about $55 for a full year assuming it's one serving per day, which is the same decimal order of magnitude as $10 (but, I suppose, since we are on HN, is three or four orders of magnitude in binary)
80-90% of the visible signs of ageing come from the sun. This is why, in older people, you'll find their body generally looks younger than their face. This is because clothes protected their body from the sun, but their faces were fully exposed.
Always wear sunscreen on your hands, face and neck every time you go outside. If you're the type of HN'er that is on the computer all day and rarely goes outside, doing this on the few occasions you do will take away one of the only opportunities the sun will have to age you.
A lot of people are already vitamin D deficient and avoiding sun or using sunscreen more will make it worse. The health risks and consequences are much greater than that of sun exposure, which is likely why sun exposure decreases cancer risk and mortality rates substantially, despite the increased risk of skin cancer.
looking young is a fine goal, but this advice is too general on a forum like this. The actual UV index varies wildly based on location and time of year.
Your advice would be crazy in seattle or london for example. Except summer time, or if one works outdoors.
You recommend I put on sunscreen when it’s cloudy, i can’t see the sun, and the weather app shows a UV index of 3? You did say “every time” lol. I’ve noticed people in this thread (not you specifically) don’t have the capacity for nuance on this subject. It’s baffling to me.
Questions people should ask themselves:
- how long will i be outside?
- is it early morning or early evening? if so sunscreen is pointless.
- what is the peak UV index in my location today? is it 2 or 11?
- am i genetically predisposed to skin cancer, or have very light skin?
Link to study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12700204/
Although I think the more interesting question is whether sunbed use increases or decreases overall mortality. The only study I can find is Lindqvist's:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/joim.12251?g...
Overall, sunbed use reduced the all-cause mortality by a ratio of 0.77 or 0.87 depending on the model used. It increased the risk of developing MM, and the risk of dying from MM, although all-cause mortality was not increased even in patients diagnosed with MM. (This seems to be because there is a very low overall risk of MM mortality, but UV light exposure seems to provide a greater overall health benefit than the small risk of increased MM risk).
It’s like someone wrote an article in 1992 and finally decided to submit it.
It's news for many Americans.
No it isn't.
"The young tanning bed users had more skin mutations than people twice their age, especially in their lower backs, an area that does not get much damage from sunlight but has a great deal of exposure from tanning beds."
So in other areas than the lower back, everyone - tan bed users or not - have these supposed seeds of melanoma as well? And that is for a much larger area of the skin than the one mentioned.
Also I wonder about the quote that a mutated cell can never go back. The immune system could kill the mutated cells and thereby promote the unmutated ones. Though nothing is perfect of course. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/jan/analysis-protective-lung...
> The immune system could kill the mutated cells and thereby promote the unmutated ones.
This happens all the time. The mutated cells we see are the ones that immune system couldn't detect and kill. Fortunately they are still overwhelmingly non-cancerous, but unfortunately some might be.
Yes I agree, I was just responding the article's "“We cannot reverse a mutation once it occurs, ..." I don't think that is entirely accurate. Also, I think it is a dynamic process, so even cells the immune system hasn't killed yet could be found later. Or the mutation could cause other deviancies that will make the cell uncompetitive with healthy cells. But it is a slow process - it takes years for former smokers' lung cancer risk to return to near that of never smokers. And it probably never gets there - some mutated cells may never be detectable and there's clearly also a threshold beyond which the cancer is irreversible, at least without intervention.
If you travel around you can see with your own eyes that countries that have both A) more sun and B) culture of intentional exposure (e.g. at the beach) people by the age they're 40 have on average noticeably worse skin. More wrinkles, more dark patches etc.
Don’t even have to go to other countries.
Just visit New Mexico (;->
More skin cancer
Its like everyone's arguing we should optimally live in darkness. As if 1. Humans didnt evolve living outdoors, 2. Everyone ages at the same rate 3. If they did, no one would ever get MM again. Like many things across the universe, too much of a good thing becomes bad. And "too much" varies considerably from one individual to the next. And no one in their 80s who avoided exposure to the sun is without wrinkles.
I thought the healthy consensus was to get a little of actual sunlight on the skin for vitamin D production and other things
What about red light treatment,
https://platinumtherapylights.eu/?srsltid=AfmBOoo2cCKKYMO53w...
I live in Ireland, there's practically 0 opportunity to get exposed to the sun unless you work outdoors, and even then only your face and hands and perhaps forearms get exposed. I just take vitamin D tablets.
Also I know UV goes through clouds, but when its raining all the time you tend to stay indoors and only go outside with raincoat / umbrella.
This reminds me of the "Tanning Mom".
[0] https://edition.cnn.com/2013/02/26/justice/new-jersey-tannin...
Why go to the expense of a tanning bed when you can get skin cancer for free.
Geographically this is unpractical at some locations. Mild understatement. Do you happen to live in a year round sunny place?
This is true. As a society we often overlook the barriers to get skin cancer in many communities.
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My job requires me to work indoors during high-UV hours. But I'll look into weekend exposure, thanks!
Get a job as a welder and you can get UV exposure every day!
It’s currently -10C with 50km/h wind gusts. The cloud cover suggests I’ll see some snow today. There is no sun.
I’ll lend you my balcony if you want to try for a tan. Do you think it will happen before sunset? That’s 430pm and it is currently 10:30am.
Most of you would not even be close to guessing the top ten states with the highest skin cancer rates.
Utah Minnesota Vermont Arizona Iowa Idaho New Hampshire South Dakota Nebraska Kentucky
https://statecancerprofiles.cancer.gov/incidencerates/index....
Skin damage, and skin cancer, is not just about the sun. It is about genetics and nutrition as well.
It's not just about cancer. it's about aesthetics, how leathery you look.
As a naturist I’ve always wondered whether there’s a difference in prevailing skin cancer rates, but I’ve never found any data.
Lip fillers are the new artificial tanning.
Looking forward to seeing the downstream effects.
How does this compare to Melatonan peptide?
Melanotan makes your skin react to light more effectively and you can get a full tan quite quickly with it (even in a few days). I don't know whether that means it ages you less because it takes less UV exposure to get a good tan with it or if it has some other adverse side effect. But I have tried it once and it is definitely effective.
I assume both is unhealthy, but I also like to be tanned and take the risk. Preferably from safe sun, but when not possible I’m debating tanning bed vs Melatonan and I haven’t found evidence.
What a stupid thing. Probably on par with people bleaching their skin with chemicals.
But my b-hole is b-hole coloured and what if somebody sees it?
In my experience, people who tan know this but the argument is always they don’t care it’s part of life and it’s better to just enjoy now than spend time worrying about looking wrinkly in the future, because what’s the point of being old and having smooth perfect skin?
Fucking stupid, there is nothing better in life than looking young and beautiful forever IMO.
Most people can barely think a month ahead, they will wake up one day and be like oh shit why do I look so old and panic hard and do all sorts of surgeries, skin creams etc. nonsense while they could have just avoided the sun or used the suncreen..
Most people thinking aging is something that happens to other people, but that they will always pass for 20 something. Then they get offended when you correctly guess their age in the late 30s or 40s.
After workout, i sit in the mild sun each morning before having my breakfast and have done so for many years now. I live near Himalayas and sun is always there, except for some weeks of winter.
It’s not just the working out — it’s the sun lounging that has really made you comprehend the differences.
And?
He's very fit but looks like he's 120 years old.
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