Originally published July 17 2005
Careful sun exposure means getting adequate amounts of vitamin D while avoiding skin damage
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The Courier-Journal features an article about how to properly get enough sun to receive its benefits, while avoiding any harm.
In April at the 2005 American Association for Cancer Research meeting in Anaheim, Calif., a Harvard professor of medicine and nutrition suggested that vitamin D, which the skin makes from ultraviolet rays from the sun, might prevent 30 deaths for each one caused by skin cancer.
Vitamin D, called the sunshine vitamin, is known to improve muscle and bone health and reduce the risk of falling in older people, but there is debate about how much vitamin D is needed and how best to get it.
The American Academy of Dermatology last month acknowledged that some people have too little vitamin D but strongly recommended that they boost it with nutritional supplements and not through exposure to natural or artificial ultraviolet light.
People at risk for vitamin D deficiency include older adults, women and dark-skinned individuals who can't absorb enough ultraviolet rays without risking skin damage.
Other people get sufficient exposure to sunlight through everyday life, said Dr. James Spencer, clinical professor of dermatology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.
To strike a balance between useful sun exposure and protection from cancer-causing rays, the National Institutes of Health recommends that just twice a week you expose some skin -- face, forearms, legs or back -- without sunscreen for about 10 to 15 minutes, followed by an application of sunscreen with a sun protection factor of 15.
From an early age, incidental exposure to the sun causes damage that can be detected in very young children when they are viewed with an ultraviolet camera lens.
Parents of teens are strongly urged by public health experts to discuss the dangers of both sun exposure and tanning beds, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
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