Higher ultraviolet light exposure is associated with lower mortality

Higher ultraviolet light exposure is associated with lower mortality... <i>for white people residing in the United Kingdom.</i><p>The selected cohort of people is pretty specific from a global perspective. In particular, if you live in a higher UV location (i.e. closer to the equator), intentionally increasing sun exposure like they measured in this study may not be necessary or helpful. For instance, the entire lower 48 states in the USA are below the same latitude as the UK.

I have a very unscientific feeling that the scientific consensus will probably one day end up being something like:<p>sun is good for you in moderation, the amount that is ok depends on your skin color, how tanned you get, in which part of the world you are and how often you are outside. Avoid too much sun and avoid sun burns and also avoid crazy strong sunscreens that block the benefits of getting sunlight. The lifestyle that some people have of spending the whole year inside in an office and that spending their all vacations roasting at the beach is very unhealthy because body does not have time to adapt.

So it&#x27;s not just that people who go outside more are generally healthier: &quot;Solarium users were also at a lower risk of non-CVD&#x2F;non-cancer mortality.&quot;

So our body is best adapted to our natural environment where UV exposure is frequent. Scientists had their null hypothesis backwards.

This is an interesting finding. But, a reminder that this is epidemiological data. It is nearly impossible to &quot;adjust&quot; for all confounding variables in epidemiological studies. For example, you may expect a health user-bias among people who use solariums, sunlamps, or have high vitamin-D levels, and health at baseline might be effected by random fluctuations not accounting for all variance. I would look for evidence of randomized trials before taking this as the truth.

It’s a travesty that darker skinned people living in northern latitudes are being marketed sun screen. They need extra exposure to get sufficient vitamin D generation. (This is one strong correlate for higher levels of obesity in these communities).

This is the same thing as Vitamin D is good for health. Exposure to the sun is correlated with good health, the problem is the direction is the other way around healthy people are outside and in the sun more, hence they have higher Vitamin D levels.

[dupe]<p>Discussion: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41301447">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41301447</a>

They do adjust for area wealth &#x2F; deprivation etc. Even then I wonder if the &quot;UV radiation&quot; is just proxy for living up North and in cities, both of which lead to less solar irradiation and generally poorer health outcomes. E.g. healthcare coverage, unemployment, access to education etc. all get worse along a north-south axis.

I would have thought that exercise was the primary contributing factor, but the study isolated the effects of UV exposure by using independent UV measures, adjusting for confounders like exercise, employing a negative control outcome, and using directed acyclic graphs to identify and account for potential confounders.

So I think now we can now say that the Lindqvist 2016 paper wasn&#x27;t just a fluke. This is a real finding.

Further discussion <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41301447">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41301447</a>

Is this more vitamin D evidence or is there something more going on?

I wonder how ”moonbrah” Bryan Johnson will take this news

This smells like BS...or rather misdirection.<p>If I go on a hike...and the health benefits of doing so are real, but I do incur a minor health negative from potential skin cancer from higher UV exposure.<p>...then I&#x27;ve still got a positive correlation between lower mortality and UV...even thought that&#x27;s linking the wrong variables

As usual, correlation != causation. In this case, higher exposure to sunlight may just follow generally from more physical activity, and correlate with a healthier lifestyle. Asking the statistics champs here if such effects have been taken into consideration?