Should You Sun Tan? Everything You’ve Been Told is Wrong!

As spring finally approaches, we will soon be reminded to avoid sun exposure. But the advice to avoid sun exposure has led to an unintended rash of vitamin D deficiency. And vitamin D deficiency is linked to several important conditions, like heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, MS and several cancers more fatal than skin cancer, like breast, prostate and colon cancer.

A remarkable new study looked at the difference that getting sun exposure or avoiding sun exposure has on your life expectancy. . . .

The study included 29,518 women from Sweden and followed them for twenty years.

Women who had active sun exposure habits (sun tanning) had a lower risk of dying of cardiovascular disease and a lower risk of dying from diseases other than cardiovascular disease or cancer.

Overall, the striking result is that people who get the most sun exposure live 0.6-2.1 years longer than people who avoid sun exposure.

Incredibly, if you don’t smoke, but avoid the sun, your life expectancy is equal to smokers who get the most sun. That result led the researchers to the incredible conclusion that, at least measured in this way, avoiding sun exposure is a risk factor of similar magnitude to smoking.

Specifically, avoiding the sun increases your risk of dying from cardiovascular disease by 60%: the increase in risk is 50% versus moderate sun exposure and 230% versus the highest sun exposure. Your risk of dying from diseases other than cardiovascular disease or cancer goes up by 70-110% compared to different levels of sun exposure.

Because you have a greater chance of getting cancer the longer you live, relative risk of cancer death goes up with sun exposure because you live longer. But, remember that, overall, taking in all causes of death, people with the most sun exposure live .6-2.1 years longer.

This striking study questions the conventional advice about sun exposure and shows that the opposite is true: getting lots of sun makes you live longer.

 J Intern Med 2016;doi: 10.1111/joim.12496

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