Is Sunscreen the New Margarine? (2019)

&gt; How did we get through the Neolithic Era without sunscreen? Actually, perfectly well.<p>I have to suspect that this logic won&#x27;t apply if you&#x27;re a light skinned person in a place where the natives are all fairly dark skinned.

On the other hand, massive sun exposure also ages your skin vastly faster. Remember this famous photo of the truck driver who got sun on one side of his face? [1]<p>I&#x27;ve been aware for a very long time that when I don&#x27;t get enough sun, I have less energy, I get sick more often, and my mood suffers. But at the same time, I don&#x27;t want my skin to look like leather.<p>So it&#x27;s a pretty easy compromise: I make sure to get a couple hours&#x27; of sunbathing without sunscreen every couple weeks, whether at a park, beach, or tanning salon (for a few minutes) in the winter. (Basically cured my seasonal affective disorder in the winter.) The goal is to stay healthily moderately tanned (absolutely not over-tanned) year-round. (And if I spend the whole day at the beach, I put on moderate-strength sunblock after an hour or so.)<p>But I put sunscreen moisturizer on my face and the back of my neck any day I know I&#x27;ll be outside in the sun for more than a few minutes -- if I&#x27;ll be taking a walk or eating lunch outside.<p>It seems to be a good middle ground -- and the possibility of a middle ground seems to be what is ignored in most conversations on this topic. You don&#x27;t need to choose between being a sun &quot;worshipper&quot; versus never letting a drop of sun touch your skin.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;society&#x2F;shortcuts&#x2F;2012&#x2F;jun&#x2F;05&#x2F;face-shows-damage-from-sun" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;society&#x2F;shortcuts&#x2F;2012&#x2F;jun&#x2F;05&#x2F;fa...</a>

I had done a small bit of research online some time back to know what was best for sun exposure and vitamin D. And had concluded that sunscreen on your face, ear and neck which are more likely to burn and also cause wrinkles, with about 20 to 30 minute of direct sunlight exposure on your body per day was the current recommendation.<p>I think one issue is it&#x27;s not very socially accepted for me to take a walk shirtless in the middle of the day. So I had found it quite hard to take in the sun.<p>The other thing I had read was that clothes accentuate skin cancer, because it means that we expose the same parts over and over to sun, yet we get way less amount of vitamin D and other benefits for the amount of time we are out.<p>Like 5 minutes out in the sun naked, you get a lot of surface sun, but no part of the skin is exposed for too long. While if you go out for 1 hour in the sun with clothes, you might have sunburn in the exposed areas yet didn&#x27;t even get as much vitamin D from it.

Best sunscreen is zinc oxide btw.<p>There are two classes of sunscreen, chemical and mineral&#x2F;physical.<p>The mineral&#x2F;physical ones are group by two mineral zinc oxide and titanium dioxide.<p>You get a ghost cast using mineral but you can offset it by using a tan&#x2F;colored version.<p>Mineral sunscreen are better because it stop UVB and UVA. It also doesn&#x27;t require a waiting period after applying. Zinc provide wider spectrum of protection than titanium.

This article makes an interesting point. It is more than a year old, which means there has been ample time for the research to be replicated, expanded, challenged, or even debunked. Has there been any new development in this regard?

I dislike sunscreen and I dislike having to use it all the time, but the reality is that if I&#x27;m under the full sun here in California for more than 10 minutes I&#x27;ll get a sunburn and after a few more we&#x27;re talking bubbles and water, i.e. a serious large burn. Long term disease risk is really a secondary concern for me, I can&#x27;t have half my body covered in burns all the time. I&#x27;m not some crazy outlier, but more like your regular guy from Scandinavia or what people in central Europe might call &quot;northern type&quot; informally.

UV damage accounts for 80+% of visible signs of aging. The difference between daily protection with sunscreen and not compounds over years and you can find plenty of pictures illustrating the sharp divergence in end result.<p>You should use sunscreen with a minimum SPF of 30 every day on your face and neck. Reapply with every 2 hours of direct sun exposure, accounting for things like being in the shade or behind windows (most windows filter out a significant proportion of incoming UV). This is easily the smallest change you can make to get the greatest return on anti-aging and, reiterating the above, the difference produced can be astounding.<p>For purposes of vitamin D &#x27;intake&#x27;, leave the other exposed parts of your body unslathered, as long as you&#x27;re not deliberately increasing exposure (e.g. hitting the beach). Easy fix.

To help control my sun exposure, I use UV widgets on my dashboard.<p>They help me know when I can expose as much skin as possible to get gentle exposure everywhere, and when I&#x27;ll burn in 5 minutes.<p>It&#x27;s interesting, the heat of the sun and the actual risk of burning don&#x27;t seem to be 100% correlated.<p>I find it really helpful to have actual knowledge of what the sun is doing at any one time, instead of having to guess and under or over exposing myself.<p>I&#x27;ve listed the widgets I use below for Australia, I&#x27;m sure you can find them for your location too.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.arpansa.gov.au&#x2F;our-services&#x2F;monitoring&#x2F;ultraviolet-radiation-monitoring&#x2F;ultraviolet-radiation-index" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.arpansa.gov.au&#x2F;our-services&#x2F;monitoring&#x2F;ultraviol...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cancer.org.au&#x2F;preventing-cancer&#x2F;sun-protection&#x2F;uv-alert&#x2F;uv-alert-widget.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cancer.org.au&#x2F;preventing-cancer&#x2F;sun-protection&#x2F;u...</a>

I&#x27;m one of those weird people who gets a rash when using sunscreen, and am also one of those folks who has dental fluorosis.<p>I simply stay out of the sun, wear long sleeves and a hat if I can&#x27;t avoid it, and ... Well I have ugly teeth.<p>Not wearing sunscreen isn&#x27;t a pass for exposure; there are still precautions that can be taken.

I am a Norwegian German mix and fairly white. Living in Wisconsin for the winters was difficult. The overcast weather and low sun on the horizon tended to make me feel pretty low.<p>Having moved to Florida, I get as much sun as I can take and haven’t experienced some of the lows I had in previous Wisconsin winters. I wear a straw hat, breathable long sleeve shirts and long pants to moderate my sun exposure. I have spent more time outdoors and away from cities. All together, I feel less stressed at 38 than I have in years. I attribute it to being out in the elements, WFH and pushing outside my comfort zone. It just feels better to be out here, anchored next to Cape Canaveral.

This glosses over the far more important question: Is Margarine the New Sunscreen?

I find that when I am outside a lot starting early spring, and of course not go out during noon hours (11am-4pm) in high summer, I have almost no need for sunscreen.<p>If however I spend the spring mostly indoors with few opportunities to go outside, then no matter what I do later I can not habituate and will get &#x27;sun allergy&#x27; for the season.

You’ll have to pry the Sun Bum spf 70 from my pink sunburned hands. I’m not giving that stuff up and if they go out of business my family is going to be hurting.

I just tried it on toast, and I&#x27;m going to have to agree that it&#x27;s as bad as margarine.

The optimal application frequency and SPF of Sunscreen is going to differ drastically from person to person, place to place, all within a given year.<p>A fresh-faced Irish tourist will be burnt to a crisp after a 20 min stroll on the beach in QLD, Australia in January. Yet slathering on SPF 50 in rainy Dublin upon their return would be all but detrimental.

God, can’t I just get vitamin D from other sources? I drink 24oz of milk a day and that’s about 75% of the RDI.

This is terrible advice that will kill people.<p>Here in Australia skin cancer (directly caused by exposure to UV) is the most common cancer[1] and kills an increasing proportion of people every year.<p>Sure, vitamin D deficiency is bad. But don&#x27;t tell people who are spending all day in the sun not to wear sunscreen! Tell people who never go outside to get 20 minutes of sun a day instead!<p>As pointed out elsewhere, the primary argument (&quot;how did we get through the neolithic age&quot;) is bunk - there is no evolutionary pressure once someone has reproduced, and almost always skin cancer kills people over 30.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aihw.gov.au&#x2F;reports&#x2F;cancer&#x2F;skin-cancer-in-australia&#x2F;summary" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aihw.gov.au&#x2F;reports&#x2F;cancer&#x2F;skin-cancer-in-austra...</a>