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Comment by Flankk | Hacker News Reader

That's the first I've heard that solar radiation protects against cancer. That's enough evidence for me to stop supplementing vitamin D and go outside. Next time hesitate before telling us the thing responsible for life on earth is bad. Really great experts we have who also got the food pyramid and multivitamins wrong. The scientific method isn't working too well if it's consistently churning out peer reviewed false conclusions.

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There's more than one kind of cancer... specifically here it seems the effect of interest is on colon cancer. So you might be trading off the risk of skin cancer vs colon.

And for higher latitudes vitamin D supplementation is generally a winter issue, when people are unlikely to get enough sunlight on their skin for either sunburn or vitamin D production.

Unless you're actually following "the experts" directly yourself (and I certainly don't) what you're really reading is journalism based on press releases based on abstracts of papers. So before seeking to overthrow the scientific method, see if you could get a better source of advice based upon it.

I'll take skin cancer over colon cancer any day, given it's generally the least severe.

Skin cancer is associated with good health, because to get it you need a healthy lifestyle where you're outside a lot, and you're probably older, and most kinds of it are benign.

There is some evidence that sunscreen is bad for you.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23086211

And of course, it gives your kids autism if you're a mother living too far north.

...because to get it you need a healthy lifestyle where you're outside a lot, and you're probably older, and most kinds of it are benign.

This simply isn't true. You can get lots of sun exposure simply by sitting in your backyard or balcony. You can get it sitting at sports games. Or lying on the beach. Or being a delivery driver. Folks with limited mobility can still get plenty of sun. Sun exposure doesn't mean you are active at all.

Skin cancer is simply more common in older folks, but lots of younger folks get it. IIRC, skin cancer is the most common type of cancer in young folks, especially women.

I'm pretty sure that sunscreen has not been proven to cause autism. I do live pretty far north, and absolutely no one is being warned about such a thing. I cannot imagine Norway allowing sunscreen sales if they honestly thought it caused autism - they'd at least tell pregnant folks to avoid sun for a few months. Also, many people here are fair skinned and not having sunscreen would mean that sunburns would be more severe.

Did you read the article I linked?

> I'm pretty sure that sunscreen has not been proven to cause autism.

Is joke.

But - low Vitamin D in Swedish immigrant mothers is associated with autism in their children: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4396835/

For some people, even being exposed to sunlight won't push vitamin D to safe levels.

People with darker skin tones, for instance, have a natural protection against Sun light and have a harder time synthesizing vitamin D.

Just because something provides the conditions necessary for life doesn't mean that all aspects of it are healthy. The world isn't so black and white, but instead, it is full of nuance and shades of grey. In this case: Sure, we'd die without the sun but it doesn't mean that we need a lot of it shining directly on our skin.

Salt is similar: Sure, you need some to live. That doesn't mean that drinking salt water is healthy nor is licking a salt block regularly.

You have missed the point. Scientists were the ones making it black and white. The consensus was the sun was bad for your health. They said stay out of the sun and supplement with vitamin D. As for salt, scientists got that wrong as well. Read The Salt Fix [1] for more on that.

[1] https://www.amazon.ca/Salt-Fix-Experts-Wrong-Eating-ebook/dp...

Everything in moderation. Fresh water is bad for you if it prevents you from breathing.

Or cause hyponatremia

Even if you can breathe fine, drinking way too much water can be fatal!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication

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