Health organizations urge more sun exposure, less sunscreen

Saturday, December 25, 2010 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer
Tags: sunshine, vitamin D, health news

(NaturalNews) Seven U.K. health organizations, including Cancer Research U.K. and the National Osteoporosis Society, recently made a joint announcement that the population needs to get more sun. Reversing decades of warnings about the supposed dangers of sun exposure, the groups now cooperatively agree that humans need regular sun exposure without sunscreen in order to maintain adequate blood levels of vitamin D.

Government warnings about the sun have kept millions of people out of it, or at least lathered in chemical-ridden sunscreens that block the necessary vitamin D-producing ultraviolet (UV) rays from penetrating the skin. But myriads of research brought forth over the past several years has bucked the misnomer that the sun is dangerous, showing instead that it is necessary to maintain health.

"Some of the messages about sun exposure have been too negative," explained Professor Rona Mackie, from the British Association of Dermatologists, to BBC News. "[W]e're now saying that exposure of ten to 15 minutes ... without suncream, several times a week is probably a safe balance between adequate vitamin D levels and any risk of skin cancer."

Vitamin D deficiency is linked to numerous diseases including osteoporosis, heart disease, autism, diabetes, muscle degradation and cancer. Most people in the industrialized world, and now even in the developing world, are deficient because they spend very little time outdoors in natural sunlight. And when they do, many use copious amounts of sunscreen.

Studies have found that roughly 70 percent of whites and 97 percent of blacks are woefully deficient in vitamin D. And even though vitamin D prevents 77 percent of all cancers, U.S. health authorities have been slow to recommend that Americans up their vitamin D intake (https://www.naturalnews.com/030598_vitamin_D_...).

Sources for this story include:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12013332