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Comment by heavyset_go | Hacker News Reader

The CDC does not recommend seeking sunlight to promote the production of endogenous vitamin D[1]:

> The skin can produce only a limited amount of vitamin D at one time. Once the body has reached this limit, spending more time in the sun will not continue to increase vitamin D levels. However, continued time in the sun will increase your skin cancer risk. There is no known level of UV exposure that would increase vitamin D levels without also increasing skin cancer risk. Vitamin D can be obtained safely through food and dietary supplements without the risks associated with overexposure to UV.

Same thing with the EPA[2]:

> Get Vitamin D safely through a diet that includes vitamin supplements and foods fortified with Vitamin D. Don't seek the sun.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/skin/basic_info/outdoors.htm

[2] https://www.epa.gov/sunsafety/sun-safety-tips

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What they neglect to mention is that increased sun exposure reduces all cause mortality, including from melanoma. Yes, it does increase skin cancer, but paradoxically reduces mortality from skin cancer.

"Additionally, assessment of sun exposure parameters has consistently shown an association between the development of malignant melanoma and short-term intense UV exposure, particularly burns acquired in childhood. As a consequence, protection of the skin from UV radiation is an integral part of skin cancer prevention campaigns. However, more chronic less-intense UV exposure has not been found to be a risk factor for melanoma and in fact has been found in some studies to be protective."

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-46227-7_...

There is no known level of car commuting that would increase salary potential without also increasing car accident risk. Salaried income can be obtained safely through remote work without the risks associated with car commuting

I mean you joke but in my book, participating in the most dangerous thing any of us do two times less per day is a win in my book. Plus all the other nice things like, destroys the environment a bit less, less traffic, and so on.

I don't know why you are getting down voted. Driving is also the most dangerous thing I do each day and there are countless good reasons to ditch the daily commute. For both me and society at large.

Yeah but there's a Pareto frontier where if you can't find a remote job, driving is probably better than being broke

this assumes that there are not highly lucrative roles that aren't in person.

most of the director and above roles require pretty consistent in-office presence, for example.

The CDC has to provide advice to people as far north as Alaska, as tropical as Hawaii, and as far south as Miami - for a very heterogeneous population that doesn't understand nuance and tradeoffs.

Hawaii is the southern-most state in the USA.

I know, but then the sentence would be clunky. It's usually not considered "the south".

And the elite are shocked, shocked! To learn we don't trust their shamans.

Wow, that is surprising.

Even Australia, a country with high skin cancer rates and high public health campaigns to reduce it recommends people get Vitamin D from the sun (although in limited amounts in summer):

https://healthybonesaustralia.org.au/your-bone-health/vitami...

The wind is shifting on this one. For example: https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-mark-butler-mp/m...

I caught some free-to-air TV recently and they're running ads that make the sun sound as dangerous as cigarettes. Scenes of folks all like "I thought I'd just have a bit of a garden. Then I got skin cancer." It's a big push to change attitudes for a historically sun-loving country.

Reads like CYA warnings, not lifestyle advice

Even after how much they botched the Covid response, you still go to the cdc for basic vitamin advice?

“Natural? That must be bad for you. Take these supplements that are manufactured by companies we totally don’t own stock in”

Is the implication that the body needs more Vitamin D than the body will produce through sunlight exposure? I thought sunlight exposure was best because it wouldn't lead to _too much_ Vitamin D.

The OP article basically concludes the same thing for those of us above and below 33° latitude.

"Please do not leave the mines. Everything you need is available within the mines; you must only do your mining. It is dangerous outside the mines. If you insist on leaving the mines, you will need our protections or you will die. You will need to do more more mining to be protected. Please do not leave the mines. You do not want to leave the mines. It is dangerous outside the mines"

Here's what the article says before the quote I posted above:

> Spending time outdoors can improve overall health and wellness. The outdoors offers many opportunities to be physically active. Time outdoors may also promote mental health and stress reduction. While enjoying the benefits of being outdoors, people can decrease skin cancer risk from too much UV exposure by using sun protection. Protect yourself by staying in the shade, wearing protective clothing, and applying and re-applying a broad spectrum sunscreen with a sun protection factor (SPF) of 15 or higher. Communities can help by ensuring shade is available in public parks. Schools and businesses may consider adding shade to school grounds and places were people gather outside.

I still can't tell if you're posting these quotes to highlight how Kafkaesque and self-satirizing things have become in modern institutions or if you earnestly think they refutes something in the submitted paper.

The quotes don't seem to speak for themselves, so sharing your own interpretation might help the discussion more than just posting further selections.

It's literally an article promoting the health benefits of being outdoors. It happens to provide a caveat about sun exposure at the end given that it's from the CDC website's section about skin cancer. I'd hardly call that Kafkaesque.

"There is no known level of UV exposure that would increase vitamin D levels without also increasing skin cancer risk."

This seems off to me. Sounds like they're saying there's no known safe level of sun exposure. I wasn't able to find any studied, including on thier page, supporting that. Most of the studies I saw actually use infrequent UV exposure populations for the baseline. Are there any studies that show 5 minutes of exposure a day is significantly worse than 0 minutes?

Why disagree?

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