Sunlight can be positively good for you.
It activates a gene called pom-C, which in turn helps to:
create melanin that determines your skin colour,
enhance your sex drive,
stimulate your happiness hormones (endorphins) and
help you burn fat to keep you thin (by stimulating leptin).
In reasonable doses it has long been known to:
help your body to generate essential vitamins - primarily Vitamin D, but others as well;
help your body to combat various illnesses and yes: including cancers, and it can help to clear-up some skin problems;
act to reduce your stress through inducing a sense of relaxation and wellbeing. This helps, amongst other things, to re-build your immune system after months of stress at work!
New research suggests that Vitamin D3 has the potential to lower the risk of common cancers (e.g colon, breast and ovarian) by up to 50%.
Anything else?
Yes .. and why not!
Sunbathing can make you look good and feel good...
.... and is also a GREAT way to unwind!
But.. of course, we are talking REASONABLE Sunbathing here!
As in most things, the secret is in being reasonable. What is reasonable for one person is not reasonable for another. This is a classic example of where knowledge is all. Get it right and you will feel and be healthy and look GREAT. The penalty for getting it badly wrong could be severe.
The dangers of, on the one hand,
skin
cancers or, on the other hand, vitamin deficiencies could
be very real to you!
On the 30th March 2004 Cancer Research UK put out a press release that warned "Almost three quarters of Britain's young men and women are boosting their risk of potentially fatal skin cancer in their search for a suntan. "
Since then the Sunlight Nutrition and Health Research Center, quoting recent research, has stated that "50,000-63,000 annual cancer deaths in the U.S. (10% of all cancer deaths) could be prevented if all Americans had sufficient vitamin D..... In the UK, the preventable cancer deaths with sufficient vitamin D may be as high as 20% since oral intake is low and vitamin D produced from solar UVB is much lower than in the U.S." It goes on "While more research is needed to check these results, there is already enough known about the health benefits of vitamin D to change public health policies now."
This alternative view is not a lone view. For instance it does receive support from at least one unlikely source. SAGA is a British company that specialises amongst other things in providing Holidays for those over 50. Perhaps a more balanced view is needed.
Safe Sunbather as a company endorses neither position. We welcome this healthy debate but do believe that, whatever the figures, we ought to recognise that the sun provides health benefits as well as posing dangers. The trick, for each of us, is to maximise the benefits whilst minimising the dangers. We cannot do this without knowledge. Our mission on this site is to provide you with the best of modern thinking available.
