New research from a Swedish study that tracked about 30,000 women over the course of twenty years reveals that women who "sunbathe" will probably live longer thank the women who avoid the sun. Heart disease was cited as one of the biggest factors that lessened in the women who got sun on a regular basis.
One of the doctors who ran the study gave the following quote...
“We found smokers in the highest sun exposure group were at a similar risk as non-smokers avoiding sun exposure, indicating avoidance of sun exposure to be a risk factor of the same magnitude as smoking,” said Dr. Pelle Lindqvist, lead author of the Journal of Internal Medicine study. “Guidelines being too restrictive regarding sun exposure may do more harm than good for health.”
Yeah I think you read it right hahaha.
Avoiding the sun could be as big or even a bigger risk factor to having bad health as smoking cigarettes. Here is a link to this specific study: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joim.12496/abstract
Your body is a fine tuned machine that has evolved over millions of years. Life has used the sun for power to run its systems since the beginning. Your doctor or dermatologist is not smarter than mother nature. You need the sun to stay healthy. You need the sun in your uncovered eyes and on your "unprotected" skin every day. And you need it at different times during the day because the color/type/power of the suns rays change throughout the day.
So how can you start getting more sun in a smart way?
First get some immediately after waking up in the early morning. At this time the sun rays are very low in UVA and UVB and very balanced in red, green and blue colors. This will give a signal to your brain that its time to turn on, wake up and do daytime stuff. Get 5-20 minutes of morning sunlight every day. As the day goes on, make sure to get outside a few more times. 10am, 12pm (Get the most UVB for Vitamin D around this time), 4pm and sunset (sun starts changing to more red and signals your brain to get ready for bed).
We have a book coming out on all of this soon called The Blue Light Diet. www.bluelightdiet.com
So how does sunscreen factor into this?
Sunscreen makes the light you are getting technically "artificial" since it blocks the UVA and UVB rays. Not good. Of course, if you're going to be outside for hours then sunscreen would maybe make sense depending on your skin type but you definitely need sun on bare skin (no sunscreen) to essentially power your mitochondria to run your body's systems. So if you burn easily, build up a tolerance. Sun is weakest in the early am and late day. Get outside then. Don't stay out long enough to burn. Eventually you'll be able to stay longer and longer.
Using sunscreen is kind of like putting a tarp over a tree. What happens when you put a tarp over a tree?
Wow I couldn't agree more. We evolved for billions of years under the sun and somehow we are supposed to believe that avoiding it and lathering chemicals all over our bodies to protect us from it, is a healthy alternative. Sometimes I wonder why our beliefs about health are so backwards. We are highly evolved monkeys, we should treat our bodies that way. Lets eat, move and have habits that mimic the primate bodies we have.
Keep up the informative and researched posts, we need more thoughtful content like this. I look forward to seeing more of your content in my feed!!!