I do not get if it’s a massive and long-running marketing campaign that has brainwashed the entire population, if it’s because many living in US and UK have a very white skin tone thus burn easily, or what else. Skin cancer is a fact of life, but for a species that evolved in the sun, I do not believe one bit that sun exposure, which incidentally is linked to many benefits because it’s so bloody normal, is something that can only be dealt with modern technology and we should be deathly afraid of it. Sure, UV radiation can cause mutations, but our immune system has evolved over billions of years to deal with this exact problem.
By all means use sunscreen if you have to spend a lot of time in the sun and risk a very unpleasant sunburn, but I wish someone would explain the Anglo obsession with daily sunscreen routine.
Yeah, most of the time our immune system deals with it, but sometimes it misses one roge cell and you've got cancer. That's why you want to limit your exposure to mutations even if you're somewhat adapted to deal with them.
Then it's a matter of looking at studies and statistics and deciding for yourself. Personally, I'll keep putting on sunscreen, as I sunburn easily ;)
There's always going to be some risk from UV exposure, but as the parent comment points out we're evolved to deal with it and even to rely on it. There's research showing that low amounts of cellular damage is actually beneficial as it triggers cellular repair mechanisms or aptosis of senecent cells. Even here other commenters point out how exposure improved their skin or vision.
However that natural evolved state doesn't include sitting inside all week and then going outside on the weekend and getting completely toasted sunburnt!
Doing that and getting completely sunburnt overwhelms our normal cellular repair mechanism, the immune system response, etc. It's much more likely a rogue cell evades the immune system when it's swamped with such cells.
Personally I avoid sunscreen if possible for short excursions but will use it if going to the pool as I'm indoors more these years and paler.
After my mother got it and had a huge chunk taken out of her leg when I was very young, we have had it drilled into our heads that the sun was going to kill us and we needed to cover up and lather in sun screen for even the slightest possibility of sun exposure.
Obviously that didn't help much as many of us still got it anyway, hah!
But yea there are some folks who are terrified of the sun. I personally think 15-20 minutes unfiltered sunlight is good for me, but beyond that I'm looking for the nearest shade or trying to cover up.
> Usually we close our eyes in reflex due to intense light from the Sun, but on day of an eclipse, the intensity of sunlight is decreased and we can view the Sun through naked eyes. While we watch a solar eclipse without any protection to our eyes, the ultraviolet rays penetrate our eyes and cause retinal burn, leading to loss of central vision.
[1]: https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/partial-solar-eclips...
Apparently there has been an sharp rise in people coming in with retinal damage from staring at the sun. They didn't go into details why someone would do that, but reading this on HN I can start to guess.
The UV light polymerizes collagen in presence of vitamin B. They did experiments by repairing cornea that way:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3018104/
"The aim of this study is to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of riboflavin-ultraviolet type A (UV-A) light rays induced cross-linking of corneal collagen in improving visual acuity and in stabilizing the progression of keratoconic eyes.
...
The eyes were saturated with riboflavin solution and were subjected for 30 min under UV-A light
...
Cross-linking was safe and an effective therapeutical option for progressive keratoconus."
breppp•1h ago