Summertime gladness
In order to have a calm mood and avoid illness, we need healthy vitamin D levels. It may not always be summery and warm in Marin, but the sunshine we do get boosts our mood in a variety of ways, the most important allowing our skin to manufacture this wondrous substance.
It’s almost a misnomer to call D a vitamin, as it actually functions more like a hormone, calibrating immune function, cognitive function, cardiovascular health, fertility, and the prevention of certain cancers. Woah!
Understanding that while the risk of skin cancer is real, it’s time to reshape the conversation around the risks and benefit of the sun. We’ve been taught to fear sunshine and slather SPF across every inch of ourselves, and while there’s no question that avoiding overexposure makes good sense, perhaps it comes at the cost of a population-wide vitamin D deficiency, impacting all of us, and those with melanated skin most profoundly.
In reality, the right amount of sun exposure is as varied as all the different combinations of skin tone and latitude. When it comes to skin cancer prevention, the most important thing is to avoid burning. Wear a hat, don’t burn! Many of us keep ourselves as pale and protected as possible, but then if you have an oopsie and do get burnt, this puts you at a greater risk for skin cancer than if you’d simply been getting baseline low levels of exposure year-round.
Analysis even shows that the benefits of sun exposure may offset the increased mortality risk from skin cancer! Vitamin D deficiency from avoiding sunshine is associated with diabetes, obesity, dementia, COVID complications, cancers, heart disease, osteoporosis, asthma, and depression. Researchers in Sweden found that individuals avoiding sun exposure were twice as likely to die than others!
While supplements for vitamin D are available, it is my conviction that supplements can never take the place of the real thing… As with so many aspects of our health, vitamin D dynamics are more complicated than what a pill can fulfill. EnLIGHTening? I thought so too.
Dont’t forget the reef-safe, non-endocrine disrupting sunscreen :)