(5 min. read)
The majority of us in America just simply don’t go outside anymore.
Outside activities for us consist of walking quickly to and from our cars, taking out the trash, or if we do go on walks, they’re usually in the early morning or evening.
Campaigns to raise awareness about skin cancer have done an excellent job in scaring the public into avoiding outside activities, especially in the sun for periods of more than five to ten minutes.
The fact is, we’ve been greatly misled into believing that sun exposure is heavily correlated with cancer and poor health.
In reality, proper sunlight exposure might be necessary to various essential bodily functions, and risks of disease and cancers drastically increase with continued avoidance.
Vitamin D, The Magic Vitamin
Vitamin D, unlike other essential vitamins found only in food, can be synthesized in the skin through a photosynthetic reaction triggered by exposure to UVB radiation.
The active form of the vitamin, 1,25 dihydroxyvitamin D3 (1,25[OH]D), is thought to regulate at least 1,000 different genes governing virtually every tissue in the body and is actually a hormone chemically akin to steroids.
We were meant for sunlight, and a decent amount of it too.
In the summertime, a half-hour in the sun for most white people without sunscreen releases 50,000 IU (1.25mg) of vitamin D into circulation within 24 hours of exposure. The same exposure releases 20,000 -30,000 UI for tanned people (need ~1 hour for 50,000 UI) and 8,000-10,000 UI in dark skinned people (need ~3 hours for 50,000 UI).
These are the optimal sun conditions we should be getting in order to receive benefits that vitamin D can provide for our physical and mental health.
The Benefits
There are a multitude of benefits that are directly known to be associated with increased sun exposure.
Vitamin D enhances calcium and phosphorus absorption in the intestine, regulating bone-calcium metabolism and makes our bone structure healthy.
In fact, without sufficient vitamin D, bones won’t form properly for young children and can cause skeletal deformities and growth retardation. For adults, low levels will precipitate and exacerbate osteoporosis and cause the painful bone disease osteomalacia.
Populations at higher latitudes (less sun exposure) have a higher incidence and prevalence of MS; a review in the December 2002 issue of Toxicology by epidemiology professor Anne-Louise Ponsonby and colleagues from The Australian National University revealed that living at a latitude above 37° increased the risk of developing MS throughout life by greater than 100%.
There is also a connection of low sun exposure to metabolic syndrome, a cluster of conditions that increases one’s risk for type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
William Grant, who directs the Sunlight, Nutrition, and Health Research Center, a research and education organization based in San Francisco, suspects that sun exposure and higher 25(OH)D levels may confer protection against other illnesses such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA), asthma, and infectious diseases.
Sunlight also benefits mental health regulation drastically, by affecting the proper production of hormones for our circadian rhythm.
As diurnal creatures, we humans are programmed to be outdoors while the sun is shining and home in bed at night. This is why melatonin is produced during the dark hours and stops upon optic exposure to daylight.
This pineal hormone is a key pacesetter for many of the body’s circadian rhythms. It also plays an important role in countering infection, inflammation, cancer, and auto-immunity.
UVR also increases blood levels of natural opiates called endorphins. Melanocytes in human skin actually express a fully functioning endorphin receptor system.
All these benefits and more are due to proper vitamin D synthesization and sunlight exposure.
Now to address the main issue that comes to mind when discussing getting the rays of Apollo blasted at us for more than 8 hours a day, “what about cancer risk?”
Cancer Questions
Today, the three main forms of skin cancer—melanoma, basal cell carcinoma, and squamous cell carcinoma—are largely attributed to excessive UVR exposure.
All of these cancers are directly attributable to too much sun, which has been used as the argument for skin cancer awareness campaigns and sunscreen companies to get us scared to go outside when it’s sunny.
However, whereas skin cancer is associated with too much UVR exposure, other cancers could result from too little. Living at higher latitudes increases the risk of dying from Hodgkin lymphoma, as well as breast, ovarian, colon, pancreatic, prostate, and other cancers, as compared with living at lower latitudes.
Moreover, although excessive sun exposure is an established risk factor for cutaneous malignant melanoma, continued high sun exposure was linked with increased survival rates in patients with early-stage melanoma in a study reported by Marianne Berwick, an epidemiology professor at the University of New Mexico, in the February 2005 Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Holick also points out that most melanomas occur on the least sun-exposed areas of the body, and occupational exposure to sunlight actually reduced melanoma risk in a study reported in the June 2003 Journal of Investigative Dermatology.
So Get Outside
Once you learn the truth about being in the sun, there’s no going back.
Do your best to plan accordingly to get the optimal amount of exposure for your skin tone, it’s one of the easiest and healthiest things to do for your body.
Alfredsson, Lars, et al. “Insufficient Sun Exposure Has Become a Real Public Health Problem.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 13 July 2020, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7400257/.
Mead, M Nathaniel. “Benefits of Sunlight: A Bright Spot for Human Health.” Environmental Health Perspectives, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Apr. 2008, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2290997/.
Ashton Nichols 
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