The Art of Manliness - The Sunscreen Debate — Are We Blocking Our Way to Better Health？

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.360 You probably think of the health effects of sunlight as a mixed bag.

00:00:14.820 On the one hand, sun exposure helps your body make vitamin D, but on the other, it can cause

00:00:19.380 skin cancer. To get around this conundrum, dermatologists frequently recommend avoiding

00:00:23.880 sun exposure when you can, slathering on sunscreen when you can't, and taking a vitamin D supplement

00:00:28.740 to make up for the lack of sunlight in your life. Yet in seeking to solve one problem,

00:00:32.960 this advice may open up many others and be contributing to ill health in the West.

00:00:36.940 Today on the show, Rowan Jacobson, a science journalist who spent years investigating the

00:00:40.420 health impacts of sunlight, will impact the underappreciated benefits of sun exposure,

00:00:44.600 and that, crucially, they're not primarily a function of the production of vitamin D

00:00:48.400 and can't be replaced with a pill. We talk about what else is at work in ultraviolet radiation's

00:00:53.100 positive effects on blood pressure, autoimmune diseases, insulin resistance, mood, and more.

00:00:57.880 We also get into how to weigh these benefits against the risk of skin cancer, why health

00:01:01.740 officials in Australia, which has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world, have changed

00:01:05.580 the recommendations around sun exposure, and if there's a role sunscreen should still play

00:01:09.420 in your routine. After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash sunlight.

00:01:25.560 Rowan Jacobson, welcome to the show.

00:01:27.880 Hi, Brett. Thanks for having me.

00:01:30.120 So you are a journalist, and for the past few years, you've been researching and writing about

00:01:35.520 the benefits of sunlight to our health and how the injunction to religiously slather on sunscreen

00:01:43.360 might be causing unintended health consequences. Let's talk about the health benefits of sunlight.

00:01:50.140 I'm sure listeners have heard and know that sun exposure increases vitamin D levels in the body.

00:01:56.480 How does that happen? Like, what is it about sunlight that causes vitamin D levels to go up?

00:02:02.840 Yeah, it's kind of this interesting phenomenon where we really are photosynthesizing. Like,

00:02:08.060 we don't do it like a plant does it, but we are synthesizing these compounds with the help of

00:02:13.080 photons from the sun. So, like, the way it works, so I guess for starters, vitamin D is a hormone that

00:02:20.560 is used for all kinds of different reasons in the body. Like, it's kind of misnamed as a vitamin because

00:02:25.360 it's not like the other vitamins, which are these little things that you get in food. It's a hormone

00:02:29.940 that we use for lots of different things, and it's essential to health. And we mostly make it in our

00:02:35.360 skin. And the way that evolution worked this process out is that it makes these molecules

00:02:42.900 that are, like, similar to cholesterol. They're sterols. It makes these molecules that are, like,

00:02:48.500 a couple of chemical processes, chemical steps away from becoming vitamin D. And that's as close as we

00:02:54.800 can make on our own. And we do that in the skin. And then what we rely on the sunlight to do is the

00:03:01.980 sun hits those molecules, breaks open one of the little chemical bonds between the molecules,

00:03:07.520 so that that molecule can then change its form into a different form, which is vitamin D, or

00:03:14.400 actually pre-vitamin D. And then that molecule goes into the body and gets transformed into the

00:03:21.600 type of vitamin D that we use after going through the liver and sometimes the kidneys, too. So,

00:03:26.200 it's this incredibly complicated process. But the upshot is that there's this one step that we need

00:03:31.800 sunlight to break open the bond for us so that we can change that molecule into something else.

00:03:36.820 So, I know sunlight is made up of different types of UV radiation, including UVA radiation and UVB

00:03:43.760 radiation. Is there a specific type of radiation that causes that reaction?

00:03:48.240 Yeah. For vitamin D, it's all the UVB, which is particularly a narrow wavelength of UVB, about,

00:03:54.620 like, 295 to 310, 315 nanometers. So, yeah, there's UVA, UVB, UVC. UVC gets filtered out by the

00:04:03.960 atmosphere entirely, which is a good thing because otherwise it would be really deadly.

00:04:07.960 UVB is that next wavelength. And then UVA has a very different size wavelength to it. And so,

00:04:15.380 we get both UVA and UVB on our skin. UVB is the one that can hit those molecules and break apart

00:04:23.040 that bond and make vitamin D.

00:04:24.580 What does our body do with vitamin D once it's turned into vitamin D?

00:04:29.340 So, most famously, it's essential for bone mineralization. And this was discovered way

00:04:35.360 back when kids were getting rickets in, like, during the Industrial Revolution, suddenly people

00:04:40.800 who had always been outside farming were in these cities. The cities were really sooty. So, even if you

00:04:46.880 were outside in the city, you weren't really getting any sunlight. Then the kids were working

00:04:50.500 factories. So, suddenly all the kids were getting rickets, which is when your bones are soft,

00:04:55.040 too soft. They don't get hard enough because they don't have enough calcium in them. And then you

00:04:58.700 get these bowed legs. It's bad. You don't want to get rickets for sure. But a lot of kids were in

00:05:02.620 the Industrial Revolution suddenly. And they figured out that that was because they weren't getting

00:05:08.680 proper bone mineralization. They weren't getting that calcium into their bones. And vitamin D does

00:05:13.700 that. And that discovery was a huge health step forward because we were able to pretty much eliminate

00:05:19.880 rickets, famously, because of cod liver oil. So, cod liver oil is a good source of vitamin D. So, they

00:05:26.100 started giving the kids cod liver oil. And that gave them just enough D to not get rickets. They also

00:05:31.840 started putting babies in the sun. You know, like, there's these crazy photos from back in the day of, like,

00:05:38.060 these little cages hanging out the windows of tenement buildings. And you would put your baby in

00:05:43.620 that cage for a little while just to, like, get a little sunlight on the baby.

00:05:47.520 That's interesting. So, people hear that, okay, I just need vitamin D. I don't want to sit out in

00:05:51.820 the sun because I don't want to get a sunburn. I don't have time for that. I don't want to get skin

00:05:55.480 cancer. So, I'll just take a vitamin D supplement. And that'll take care of me. And I'll get all these

00:06:00.460 benefits that come from vitamin D. One of them is just bone mineralization. And then there's been

00:06:05.320 these other health benefits that have been associated with vitamin D. So, if you have

00:06:08.840 elevated vitamin D levels, you have better metabolism, you reduce your cancer rates,

00:06:13.960 things like that. So, yeah, why not just take the vitamin D supplement?

00:06:18.620 Yeah, right. And this is the message and the advice we've been receiving from dermatologists for

00:06:22.660 a couple of decades now is, like, we know that sun exposure causes skin cancer. We know that it makes

00:06:29.640 vitamin D. We know we need vitamin D. But no problem. Avoid all sun exposure.

00:06:34.380 And yeah, your body won't make enough vitamin D, but you just take vitamin D pills to make up for

00:06:40.140 that and problem solved. So, that was this overly simplistic understanding for a while. But to test

00:06:46.940 it, what you have to do is do these trials where you get a lot of people so that you have some,

00:06:52.080 you know, statistical power to get randomness out of there and give half the people vitamin D pills

00:06:57.340 and the other half just get a placebo and see what happens. And so, now some huge, huge trials have

00:07:03.020 been done multiple years, tens of thousands of people involved in the trials. And we have

00:07:08.860 extremely strong definitive evidence that those vitamin D supplements do not help to improve any

00:07:15.640 disease. Just they totally failed in a way that, you know, science rarely gets results that are so

00:07:22.620 definitive. Like, there's no question. They just, they didn't improve a single condition,

00:07:27.140 which was really surprising because, like you say, people who have high levels of vitamin D in

00:07:32.700 their blood have lower rates of, like, pretty much every disease you can think of. So, we really did

00:07:38.540 think, oh, vitamin D is not just for bones. It must be essential for all these other things in the human

00:07:44.040 body and for preventing all these other diseases. So, then these supplement trials, when they failed,

00:07:49.200 then everyone had to kind of go back to the drawing board and say, like, no, wait a minute. How can it be

00:07:54.460 that people who have naturally high levels of D in their blood have lower rates of all these diseases?

00:08:00.660 But if you artificially raise people's amount of D in their blood with supplements, it doesn't do

00:08:06.540 anything. And you probably, you already know the answer. Right. Well, yeah, it's the sunlight that's

00:08:11.200 doing it. Vitamin D, vitamin D is just a marker that you're getting a sufficient amount of sunlight.

00:08:17.100 Right, exactly. So, it wasn't causative. It was just correlation. Like, the people with the lower

00:08:23.200 rates of disease had a higher D because they were getting sun exposure. But now we know it wasn't

00:08:30.540 the D that was causing the lower rates of disease. It was something else about sun exposure.

00:08:35.480 Okay. So, people probably heard this idea that vitamin D improves a bunch of health conditions.

00:08:39.580 But it turns out it's not the vitamin D. There are other things going on, other pathways with the

00:08:45.760 sunlight itself that creates those health effects. And we're going to talk about how the sunlight can

00:08:50.620 improve those different facets of our health. That's not to say that vitamin D is not important.

00:08:54.960 You can get it from the sun or from a supplement. And as you said, we need vitamin D so we don't get

00:09:00.480 things like rickets. You don't want rickets. So, we need vitamin D for that.

00:09:05.020 Yeah. And vitamin D is probably important in other ways. Like, pretty much every cell in our body has

00:09:09.980 vitamin D receptors in it. So, they're there for a reason. Like, our cells are all doing things with D,

00:09:14.780 but we only need so much probably. So, you don't want to be vitamin D deficient. But this idea that

00:09:21.100 really cranking up your level of D was going to somehow like chase all these diseases out of your

00:09:25.680 body, that has turned out to be false. So, D is important, but you probably get enough through

00:09:30.920 sunlight, most of us. But it depends. Like, it depends where you're living. And so, yeah. So,

00:09:35.180 that's only part of it. So, could there be other things that sunlight is doing for you? And now,

00:09:40.920 we have quite a bit of evidence that, yes. It turns out there's dozens of different processes

00:09:47.160 and pathways that are triggered by sunlight hitting skin that have lots and lots of different effects

00:09:52.920 on the human body. And we're really just learning about them. But so, this is the impasse. So, now,

00:09:58.860 the dermatologists are going to have to readdress this whole formula that they gave to people. Like,

00:10:05.020 don't worry about the D. Get the D through the supplement because it doesn't work. And all those

00:10:09.520 health benefits that we're chasing, probably you need actual sunlight for that.

00:10:14.440 Well, let's talk about some of these health benefits that people are starting to see

00:10:17.560 there's a connection to sunlight. One of them is blood pressure. There's a connection between

00:10:23.140 increased amounts of sunlight exposure and decreased blood pressure. And there's a guy,

00:10:28.000 it's actual, it's a dermatologist who found this connection, a guy named Richard Weller.

00:10:31.660 Tell us about him. What's the connection between sunlight and blood pressure?

00:10:34.840 So, he's a fascinating guy, a dermatologist in Scotland. But he does work in Ethiopia every year

00:10:41.480 and has for decades. And he started questioning the conventional wisdom on sun exposure and vitamin D

00:10:48.500 after doing all this work in Ethiopia, where, you know, Ethiopia, like, huge amount of sun because

00:10:54.240 it's in the tropical zone, in the equatorial zone. And it's up at like 6,000 feet. So, it gets a huge

00:11:01.360 amount of sunlight. And he says he never treated a skin cancer there. Never saw any because he was

00:11:05.880 treating people with very dark skin and they just weren't coming down with skin cancers.

00:11:09.760 So, that was like the first step where he started questioning some of the conventional wisdom.

00:11:14.920 But then, in terms of blood pressure that we had known for a long time in these observational

00:11:22.120 studies, that people living in areas that got more sun exposure had lower blood pressure.

00:11:26.860 So, like high latitudes where you don't get as much sunlight, higher blood pressure. And everyone

00:11:32.040 sort of had sort of said like, well, you know, it's probably just temperature because your blood

00:11:37.080 pressure is definitely lower in warmer temperature areas. So, everyone kind of like chalked it up to

00:11:41.740 temperature. But then, back, I don't know, in the early 2000s, I think it was, some scientists

00:11:48.680 discovered that, actually, it was earlier than that, scientists discovered that nitric oxide,

00:11:55.520 which is a very simple molecule, is actually a really important signaling molecule in the body.

00:12:00.480 And that nitric oxide will cause the muscles in blood vessels to relax and to dilate. So,

00:12:08.300 nitric oxide is a really like potent vasodilator. So, it will expand those blood vessels and lower

00:12:14.880 blood pressure. And that was, like, I won a Nobel Prize for that, like back in the 90s, I think.

00:12:19.260 But what people only realized more recently and what Richard Weller's research helped to show was

00:12:25.560 that our skin actually has these huge stores of nitrates in them, which is sort of a precursor to

00:12:32.460 nitric oxide. And when sunlight hits skin, it breaks up those nitrates into nitric oxide and sends them

00:12:41.660 into the body and lowers blood pressure. And he did these experiments on his grad student. Like,

00:12:45.660 first, they showed it in mice. And I'm like, huh, it works. And then he did experiments on grad

00:12:50.100 students where he shone UVA. He wanted to prove it wasn't vitamin D that was responsible for this,

00:12:56.660 because everybody chalks up everything about sunlight to vitamin D. So, he used UVA instead of

00:13:00.800 UVB, because UVA light does not create vitamin D. So, he took his grad students and shone UVA light on

00:13:08.820 their arms. And he also put, like, foil, like, metal foil on half the students so that they were

00:13:16.320 getting the heat of the UVA, but not the actual beams of the UVA, because he wanted to prove that

00:13:20.920 it wasn't just heat either, because we know heat can lower blood pressure. And sure enough, the

00:13:25.220 students who got the actual rays of UVA light, their blood pressure went down more than the students who

00:13:30.260 just got the heat. And they've since done other studies looking at, like, the huge chunks of people in

00:13:35.700 both the U.S. and U.K. And yeah, it's now very clear that sun-hitting skin produces nitric oxide,

00:13:44.040 which lowers your blood pressure. And blood pressure is the, like, number one risk factor

00:13:48.720 for lost years of life and mortality worldwide. So, anything that lowers blood pressure can be a

00:13:53.620 pretty big deal. And that's a cheap intervention. It's free.

00:13:57.240 Yeah, it is. It's free. And, you know, it's a cost-benefit ratio, because when you're exposing

00:14:02.520 yourself to light, you are raising your risk of skin cancer. But skin cancer kills very few people.

00:14:08.660 It's a very, very small factor in mortality. And blood pressure and all the cardiovascular-related

00:14:14.860 diseases is, like, number one cause of mortality in the world. So, yeah, it's probably a very good

00:14:20.480 benefit for the risk.

00:14:22.260 Yeah, we're going to talk more about the real risk of skin cancer later.

00:14:25.080 But with these blood pressure experiments, it was UVA radiation that produces nitric oxide?

00:14:31.140 Yeah. Well, so he used UVA because he wanted to prove it wasn't related to vitamin D.

00:14:35.440 Okay.

00:14:35.500 But since then, I think they've found that UVB does it too. Like, all the UV produces nitric oxide.

00:14:42.300 So, yeah. So, the blood pressure lowering effect is... And I don't even like dividing it up too much,

00:14:47.620 because anytime we start to, like, boil it down to this sort of human-created simplicity,

00:14:53.400 it reminds me of, like, fat, carbs, and protein. It's like this human construct that turns out to

00:14:59.560 be much simpler than the real thing.

00:15:01.780 So, sunlight can reduce blood pressure. There's also been research showing that

00:15:05.800 sunlight can strengthen immune function or improve immune function. Can you tell us about that research?

00:15:11.720 Yeah. And that's really fascinating to me. And that was one of the... That research was one of

00:15:15.700 the main reasons the Australian authorities decided to revise their sun exposure recommendations.

00:15:21.560 But then this is, again, is something that's been known for a while. We've got 20 or 30 years of

00:15:27.260 research on this. And it's just, in science, like, Department A is not necessarily talking to

00:15:33.400 Department B. So, the immunologists were, like, way down this path of researching sunlight's effect

00:15:39.680 on the immune system. And the dermatologists were just not ever getting the message on the other side

00:15:45.520 of the campus. But anyway, so what we know is that we have a lot of immune cells in our skin,

00:15:51.020 which makes sense, because the skin is the first barrier to the outer world. So, the skin is constantly 0.57

00:15:55.580 dealing with pathogens and cuts and all kinds of, you know, assaults to the body. So, there's constant

00:16:01.980 immune action happening in the skin. And UV is another sort of, like, minor assault that we get every

00:16:08.060 day, that we've been getting every day for as long as humans have been humans. So, the skin has evolved to deal

00:16:13.780 with it. So, it gets a little dose of UV, and then it heals that damage. And healing that damage is

00:16:20.620 basically an anti-inflammatory response. So, the UV is a tiny bit of inflammation, and it triggers an

00:16:27.140 anti-inflammatory response in the skin. All these immune cells get created. They reduce inflammation.

00:16:33.920 But then what's really interesting, which is a more recent discovery, is those cells then migrate from

00:16:38.960 the skin into the body through the lymph nodes and reduce inflammation throughout the body. So,

00:16:45.000 it's the systemic anti-inflammatory response that's triggered by a little bit of UV. And that's

00:16:52.720 important because one thing we're learning more and more is that a lot of the classic diseases of

00:16:58.800 modern civilization have roots in inflammation. Like, we sort of have a lot of chronic inflammation going

00:17:04.140 on all the time. So, something, and again, like you said before, a free intervention that can reduce

00:17:09.140 inflammation could be a fantastic health benefit. And I feel like we intuitively understood this,

00:17:15.700 you know, maybe a century ago. I love reading these old history books, biographies, and there's

00:17:20.480 always this instance where some famous guy gets sick as a kid, and the doctor's like, well, you need to

00:17:27.180 take him out to the desert or go to the ocean side and get lots of sun because you got tuberculosis,

00:17:33.000 that'll help heal you. I think if they're just spending time in the sun, probably did a lot to

00:17:38.120 help strengthen their immune system. Yeah, exactly. There was this whole age of heliotherapy where,

00:17:45.280 like you said, tuberculosis, rickets, of course, and some other diseases, psoriasis, you know,

00:17:50.900 people would be sent out into the sun or they'd be sent up into the mountains in Switzerland to cure

00:17:55.180 these diseases. And it worked. They didn't quite understand why it worked, but it was somewhat

00:17:59.200 successful. So sun was definitely considered by the leading doctors to be a benefit to health.

00:18:06.140 And then that all started to flip in the 30s and 40s as everyone realized, they discovered the

00:18:11.480 mechanisms by which UV can cause skin cancer. And then slowly, decade by decade, the message that

00:18:17.980 sort of the drumbeat got stronger and stronger, stay out of the sun so you don't get skin cancer.

00:18:23.500 And we're kind of at this like peak moment of that. Another way sunlight can improve your immune

00:18:28.720 function, you know, vitamin D. Again, vitamin D plays a role in your immune system. If you get

00:18:33.980 sunlight, you're going to increase your levels of vitamin D, which also contributes to your immune

00:18:38.420 system. Exactly. And yeah, that's an important point. Like all of these pathways are probably

00:18:43.760 way more complicated than we think. Like it's not going to be one very simple step by step by,

00:18:48.700 like this to this to this. A whole lot of stuff happens when sun hits skin and all these signaling

00:18:54.140 molecules and hormones, they don't necessarily just do one thing. Like in different situations,

00:18:59.100 they'll do different things. You've got this like very complex effect happening with nitric oxide,

00:19:03.680 which can also be anti, it can be used to kill pathogens. So you've got nitric oxide, you've got

00:19:09.560 vitamin D, you've got these direct effects on immune cells. And one of the other things,

00:19:15.260 like vitamin D, when we're all told to take vitamin D pills, that's because everybody thought

00:19:19.700 there was just one type of vitamin D. And most dermatologists today still think that.

00:19:25.340 But one of the things we've learned in the past 10 years is that there are more probably like 20

00:19:30.500 different, slightly different versions of vitamin D that the body makes with sunlight. And they, you

00:19:37.240 know, they all have slightly different side chains on these molecules, but they all do slightly

00:19:40.380 different things. And we really don't understand how that works. But we do know that a bunch of those

00:19:46.380 like non-canonical types of vitamin D, you can't replace those with a pill that is going into the

00:19:54.800 stomach and then to the liver. It just doesn't work. It will not make these other flavors of vitamin D.

00:20:01.780 Related to the immune system, there's also been research showing that sunlight exposure can help

00:20:07.720 with autoimmune diseases. So this is when your immune system goes haywire and starts attacking

00:20:12.520 your body. So things like psoriasis is an autoimmune disease, arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis,

00:20:18.840 MS is another disease like that. But like sunlight seems to help with those conditions.

00:20:26.300 Yeah, for sure. Again, it's that anti-inflammatory effect. And it's really strong with MS, which is a

00:20:32.440 disease where the body's immune system starts attacking the sheaths around the nerves that

00:20:38.180 protect the nerves so that signals can be sent, electrical signals can be sent. The body mistakes

00:20:43.760 the little sheaths around those nerves for an invader and starts attacking them. It's just this

00:20:48.700 classic overreaction of the immune system. And cell exposure really effectively slows down that

00:20:56.720 process for MS. Like you look at the observational studies based on latitude and sun exposure and people

00:21:04.600 living at high latitudes have usually several times the risk of MS compared to people living at lower

00:21:11.380 latitudes. And prevalence is higher in winter than in summer. And it's also like you can even track it with

00:21:18.980 birth birth month where people born in like spring at the end of like a long winter have higher rates

00:21:26.860 than people born in early fall. Same thing for psoriasis, type 1 diabetes, like you said, and some

00:21:33.320 other autoimmune diseases. And there's some clinical trials going on right now where they're tracking this

00:21:39.860 because basically this has mostly been observational studies. So you really, in order to prove it,

00:21:44.800 to like really have like the gold standard of evidence, you need to have some clinical trials

00:21:49.400 where you've shown that it works. But we do know from some early clinical trials that just a little

00:21:56.440 bit of narrowband UVB therapy, so using a light that only shines UVB in this very narrow wavelength that

00:22:03.820 doesn't cause skin cancer, it reduces all the biomarkers of inflammation in the blood of these

00:22:09.800 patients that have MS and other things. So yeah, it looks good so far. That's really interesting.

00:22:15.760 What about insulin resistance? Does sunlight affect that? That's a big problem these days.

00:22:21.960 Huge, huge. Yeah. Insulin resistance, diabetes, all the metabolic syndrome stuff where like your

00:22:28.340 body's not metabolizing very actively. It's just sort of slowed down, getting a little groggy and

00:22:35.340 your cells aren't accepting, you know, they're resisting insulin. Yes. Sunlight has been shown

00:22:41.160 in studies of both mice and observational studies of people to have a pretty solid impact on reducing

00:22:48.680 risk of diabetes and insulin resistance. And in terms of why, like it's probably some of those

00:22:55.100 same things we've been talking about. I think there's probably an inflammatory component to diabetes

00:23:00.620 and insulin resistance as well. And so this probably reduces that a little bit. But then the other part

00:23:05.860 of it, and I think you can apply this to a lot of things we've been talking about. If you want to like

00:23:09.560 pull back and think about big picture, there's this really fascinating study a few years ago that looked

00:23:15.400 at all the genes in the human body and when they were being expressed. So then when they were being

00:23:20.960 cranked up and when they were being kind of turned off in terms of like month of the year. And what they

00:23:26.060 found was that about a third of the genes in the body have a seasonal component. So they're either

00:23:30.920 being cranked up in summer or in winter. And generally what they saw was that the inflammatory

00:23:38.260 genes were being cranked up in winter and anti in summer. So winter, like evolutionary, the theory would

00:23:46.260 be that in winter, that's when, you know, flu and all these other infectious diseases are on the rampage.

00:23:53.020 We're spending a lot of time cooped up together in spaces where we're more likely to share diseases

00:23:57.660 with each other. Summer is a low disease time. So it makes sense in winter to crank up your

00:24:03.040 inflammatory genes to deal with all these pathogens and to basically try to just survive winter. And

00:24:09.600 then summer, things are good. You're out in the open air. You can reduce all that inflammation.

00:24:15.500 But of course, the signal for that is one of them is sun hitting skin, sun hitting skin and sun

00:24:20.840 hitting retinas. So if we are living our lives indoors and aren't getting exposure outside,

00:24:26.420 our bodies might be, in a sense, thinking that it's biological winter all the time. So they're

00:24:32.460 acting like it's biological winter and they're there. So they're staying in this inflammatory state.

00:24:36.320 So that would be like the theory underlying why this would be the case. But it's just a theory right

00:24:41.260 now. We're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors.

00:24:44.280 And now back to the show. What about sun exposure and its connection to sleep and mood?

00:24:55.180 That one is for sure. Like no question. And nobody even argues with this one.

00:24:59.020 And it's through different mechanisms. It's probably partly through the skin,

00:25:02.000 but a lot of it is through the eyes. But yeah, we know for sure that getting that hit of light in

00:25:07.720 the morning is what sets your circadian rhythm, sets your biological clock, tells you that it's morning,

00:25:14.780 it's time to crank up your system and be really active and high functioning. So if you're outside

00:25:19.960 in the morning and you're getting a lot of bright light, then that melatonin that your body makes

00:25:26.040 that's for sleeping at night will quickly get reduced and you'll get alert for your day.

00:25:31.340 And then also you're on the schedule where at night the body will know to turn up the melatonin so

00:25:38.080 that you sleep well. And when you don't get that strong diurnal change in light, then your circadian

00:25:46.480 rhythms can get messed up. And you can't get it being indoors. It's interesting. I didn't start

00:25:51.680 paying attention to this until I was reading some of these researchers who specialize in this stuff.

00:25:55.900 But even a cloudy day outside is way brighter than with your lights on indoors. It's not even close

00:26:03.560 by like 50 times, a hundred times in terms of lumens. So you really need to be outside to get

00:26:09.780 that signal that tells your body to wake up and sort of crank up the whole system. And then the

00:26:16.220 opposite at night. And the connection to the mood, people are already aware of seasonal affective

00:26:20.460 disorder happens during the winter. There's less sunlight exposure. And so people kind of get in the

00:26:25.180 funk. You're probably familiar with this. You live in Vermont. Totally. Vermont falls and

00:26:29.380 winter. I remember we lived in Vermont, my wife and I, shortly after I graduated from law school,

00:26:33.420 we were there in the fall. I remember it was like four o'clock in the afternoon. It's dark. I'm like,

00:26:38.360 it's four o'clock. Why is it? It gets depressing. It got depressing.

00:26:42.460 It does. I mean, and you can fight it, right? You know, you go out, you ski, you do whatever you can

00:26:47.880 to like embrace the day, but it's still, it's like, it's not that natural an environment for human

00:26:53.680 beings at some level. So you got to figure out ways to get around that. And yeah, people do.

00:26:58.900 Yeah. Their hormones are strongly affected by that. So again, you kind of go into hibernation mode. It's

00:27:04.040 kind of like what we were talking about earlier. All that darkness is a signal to the body to just

00:27:08.120 like shut down and endure. Like, cause normally, you know, in winter food is often tight. Like

00:27:14.480 before, you know, before all our modern conveniences, you really did want to sort of put

00:27:19.540 the system on minimal mode until things got better. So I think we still are dealing with

00:27:25.820 that. So the best thing and the way to fight it is either like you can have artificial lights

00:27:30.840 that are bright enough that they can affect that SAD or, or you go outside as much as possible

00:27:36.680 or you go on vacation.

00:27:38.300 Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I saw some research that sunlight can increase levels of serotonin,

00:27:43.280 which is a feel good neurotransmitter releases endorphins that can also help you feel

00:27:48.420 high in you for, I mean, if anyone's been to the beach or in a hot sunny, it just like,

00:27:52.460 it just feels, you just feel good. You just feel so groovy whenever you catch some rays.

00:27:57.320 Yeah. And it's direct, like your skin and brain are producing endorphins or producing dopamine.

00:28:01.540 Like dermatologists talk about how unfortunate it is that people get addicted to sunlight because,

00:28:06.720 because of these things, but it's like, well, there's a reason, you know, your body isn't

00:28:11.220 just making those on a whim. There's a reason. So you don't want to get too much, but you do want

00:28:15.580 to at least pay attention to those natural signals that we have.

00:28:18.420 Okay. So I think we've talked a lot about the health benefits of sunlight increases vitamin D,

00:28:22.560 but vitamin D, what we've talked about is not necessarily connected to all these other health

00:28:27.940 benefits, like reduced blood pressure, reduced metabolic syndrome, et cetera. That is from

00:28:34.580 sunlight itself. Vitamin D is just a marker that you're getting enough sunlight and people might

00:28:40.220 be hearing this thing. Oh, okay. Yeah. I'll grant you that there's all these health benefits that

00:28:44.540 come with sunlight, but we know for a fact that it frequently causes skin cancer. So why risk the

00:28:52.960 exposure to get those benefits? You know, just put on the sunscreen and that's the stance. We've talked

00:28:58.000 about this throughout this conversation. That's the stance the American Academy of Dermatology

00:29:01.600 has taken, which says you should apply sunscreen every day on skin, not covered by clothing. If you will

00:29:08.880 be outside. And I think it's interesting because I'm 41. So if you're my age, sunscreen really wasn't

00:29:15.760 a big thing when I was growing up. Maybe my mom would say, well, you're going to go to the water

00:29:20.000 park all day, put on some sunscreen. But I don't remember putting sunscreen on that much when I was

00:29:25.280 a kid. So when did this message to always wear sunscreen arise? Like what was behind it?

00:29:30.220 Yeah. And so what was behind it was simply that one fact that we know that UV exposure triggers

00:29:38.000 skin cancer, raises your risk of skin cancer. So based on that one thing is why we've been told to

00:29:44.420 continually to keep reducing our amount of sun exposure to basically zero now. Or let me add,

00:29:50.960 skin cancer also, you know, wrinkles, sunspots, like there's this cosmetic stuff,

00:29:56.320 the cosmetic damage that UV causes as well. But in terms of health, then skin cancer is the one

00:30:02.600 thing that you have to worry about. And yeah, it's interesting that the message has gotten more and

00:30:07.480 more strident with each decade. And people have been using more and more sunscreen with each decade,

00:30:12.580 but skin cancer rates are higher than ever. So the etiology is probably more complicated than they

00:30:18.400 think, but it is definitely very well established that sun exposure causes skin cancer. But in terms of

00:30:24.640 what you want to do about it, it's not clear that a little bit of sun exposure is really that

00:30:31.320 problematic. And there's quite good evidence that there are more benefits than risks for that small

00:30:36.740 amount of sun exposure. So then it's a question of like, where do you set the, you know, the pendulum

00:30:41.760 has swung way far as far as it could in one direction where, I don't know, if you look at a lot of the

00:30:47.520 recommendations in like popular magazines and newspapers, the dermatologists are literally saying,

00:30:52.480 even in winter on a cloudy day, if you're going to be indoors all day, still put on sunscreen.

00:30:57.840 There's no science behind that. They're just trying to get people into the habit of doing it.

00:31:01.680 And I think the worry is that people aren't very good at following directions. So if you want them

00:31:07.200 to put on any sunscreen, you got to tell them to put on a lot all of the time and hope that they'll

00:31:12.300 listen to you, you know, one out of every three times or something.

00:31:15.900 In your articles, you talked about that the conversation about skin cancer is a lot nuanced. I think

00:31:20.400 people hear cancer and they just think, okay, cancer equals death automatically. And they probably

00:31:24.880 think melanoma when they think skin cancer, but there's different types of skin cancer.

00:31:29.660 Melanoma is the worst one you could get, but the stuff that's often caused by sun damage,

00:31:35.040 it's like basal cell carcinoma. Those are actually pretty treatable. Like you can actually just go to

00:31:41.620 a dermatologist and it's like an outpatient surgery.

00:31:45.380 Yeah, that's correct. There's three different kinds of cancers that are the main ones. Basal cell carcinoma,

00:31:50.080 squamous cell carcinoma, and melanoma. And basal cell carcinoma is by far the most common cancer

00:31:56.920 in the world. It's probably more common than every other cancer put together. That's the one, you know,

00:32:02.420 you always see these like, you know, public service warnings, like one in every three people

00:32:07.680 will get skin cancer. And that's what they're talking about is basal cell carcinoma. It doesn't

00:32:12.160 actually really have any health impacts 99.9% of the time. That's the one, yeah, you go in,

00:32:18.600 you get it cut off, you're, you're done. So in a way it would be better if it wasn't called cancer

00:32:24.460 because like you were saying, that word really scares people. Richard Weller, that dermatologist

00:32:29.320 we, uh, we mentioned, he actually told me that, um, when one of his patients comes in and he

00:32:34.120 diagnoses a BCC on them, he then says, congratulations, because your life expectancy

00:32:39.120 just went up. And what that means, that doesn't mean BCCs are actually good for you. It means the

00:32:46.400 people who are getting BCCs tend to be quite healthy because, you know, they're like, it's

00:32:51.260 like your dad who's playing golf in Florida every day. He's getting sun exposure. He's getting a lot

00:32:55.700 of exercise. He's getting BCCs, but he's quite healthy. So yeah, Richard Weller says he cuts a lot

00:33:01.780 of BCCs off a lot of very healthy old people. SCCs, squamous cell carcinomas are a little bit more,

00:33:08.240 little bit more to worry about than BCCs. But again, usually you just, it's just cut it off,

00:33:13.280 outpatient procedure. That's it. Melanoma is the one that kills people and that's the one you need

00:33:19.280 to worry about, but it's much, much less common than the other two. It's like one to 2% of skin

00:33:24.480 cancers are melanoma and the rest are BCCs and SCCs. So there's a little bit of a bait and switch that

00:33:29.720 you see in the public messaging where people will say, skin cancer is incredibly common. One out of

00:33:34.300 three people will get it. And then they'll say melanoma kills, you know, like 10% of the people

00:33:40.060 who get it. And if you don't look carefully, you'll think that skin cancer is both extremely common and

00:33:45.480 extremely deadly, but it's not. There are some that are extremely common and are no big deal.

00:33:50.300 And there's one melanoma that can be deadly, but it's uncommon. And BCCs definitely caused by sun

00:33:57.440 exposure. The more sun exposure you get, the more BCCs you will get. Melanoma, it's a different

00:34:02.140 story. It's not as simple as just chronic sun exposure. Melanoma tends to turn up in people who

00:34:08.300 get intermittent sun exposure. People have pale skin and basically go to Cancun on vacation and

00:34:13.720 get fried. That's kind of like the perfect formula for melanoma. And worst thing of all, probably for

00:34:19.080 you and me, it's mostly associated with sunburns in childhood and adolescence. So I had some sunburns,

00:34:28.280 some really bad ones. Me too. Me too. I grew up in Florida, you know, and so 13 year old kid growing

00:34:33.680 up in Florida is going to get a fair amount of sun. I had a few where like your skin just peels like

00:34:37.780 paper. Yeah. It hurt. But then when it peels, that was kind of satisfying. And it's just so weird. It's

00:34:43.860 kind of fun, but it's not good for you. They definitely, like every researcher I've talked to

00:34:48.100 across the board says, just don't burn. Like burns are bad. So one of the arguments you're making in

00:34:54.000 your articles and in your research is that this sunscreen absolutism that we have in the United

00:34:59.260 States, where it's like, you got to apply sunscreen, even if you just go outside for a little bit,

00:35:03.080 just all the time, even in wintertime, what it's doing. Yeah. We might be staving off these skin 1.00

00:35:08.180 cancers like basal cell carcinoma, but those, it's not going to kill you. You can get just the

00:35:12.440 surgery, you take it off, but we're missing out on those other health benefits that come from

00:35:17.320 sun exposure. Cause when you block the sun with sunscreen, you're missing out on the vitamin D

00:35:22.360 production, the reduction in blood pressure, immune system improvement, et cetera.

00:35:27.780 Yeah, possibly. It depends on the sunscreen. And this is a, this is one, one of the interesting

00:35:32.280 nuances here, I think is, you know, back when sunscreen was like SPF 15 or whatever, it doesn't

00:35:38.600 block a hundred percent. It blocks maybe like 90%. So there's still about 10% getting through.

00:35:43.480 And so maybe like on a day at the beach, that might've actually been the perfect formula where

00:35:48.000 that sunscreen was letting you get a great amount of, of a UV, but was still preventing you from

00:35:54.460 getting burned. So now of course we've got SPF 50 or even SPF a hundred sunscreens. And you know,

00:36:02.560 the advice is even on a cloudy winter day, put it on. So there's this real push to make

00:36:08.360 sure that people never, never get any photons hitting their skin. So that's probably going

00:36:13.860 to have to change. But I actually think sunscreen can be, you know, an ally in making sure you do

00:36:19.580 get the right amount of sun. Cause if it gets you outside without burning, um, it could actually

00:36:24.420 be a benefit. Something you mentioned in one of your articles, this sunscreen absolutism,

00:36:28.740 the dermatologists, they don't discriminate on your melanin level. So even if you're black or

00:36:35.960 Hispanic, where you have a lot of melanin and you don't burn as easily, they still say, yeah, 0.98

00:36:40.740 you got to wear SPF 50 sunscreen. You're like, well, that doesn't make sense.

00:36:46.900 Right. And this is the thing that's going to have to change. I think, uh, and I think probably

00:36:50.440 pretty soon, like that advice to, to always like put on heavy duty sunscreen every day, indoors

00:36:56.700 or outdoors. That's probably not a bad recommendation for people with the very palest

00:37:02.640 skin. Like people who have red hair, freckles who evolved their, you know, their ancestors

00:37:07.780 came from places at very high latitudes that were getting very little sunlight and kind of

00:37:13.100 evolved skin to harvest whatever light they could get. Like people who never tan, always

00:37:19.080 burn. That advice makes sense for them, but not for everyone else. And the world is mostly

00:37:24.080 populated by everyone else. So people with really dark skin on the other end of the spectrum 0.81

00:37:30.280 basically do not get skin cancers from sun exposure, do not have any of these risks, but also

00:37:37.700 have, uh, because they have more natural sunscreen, basically need more sun in order to produce vitamin

00:37:44.080 D and some of these other compounds. So for them, the recommendations make no sense. And then there's

00:37:48.780 a bunch of people in the middle who have maybe more of like a Mediterranean skin tone, uh, an Asian skin

00:37:54.400 tone who have a little bit more risk from, of skin cancer than people with super dark skin, but really

00:38:00.680 very little. And, uh, also probably have a lot to, to gain from moderate sun exposure. And you don't

00:38:06.880 need, that's the other thing we should probably talk about is you don't need too much to get some of

00:38:09.980 these benefits. Yeah. We'll talk about the daily recommended dose of sunlight here in a bit.

00:38:14.320 So in America, we have a very, you call it sunscreen absolutism, no matter what, how you spend your

00:38:20.220 time, whether indoors or outdoors, whether you're pale, dark, wear sunscreen, health officials in

00:38:27.220 Australia have taken a different tack. They've gotten more nuanced with sunscreen use. And this

00:38:31.820 is interesting because Australia is a place that has notoriously high levels of UV exposure in skin

00:38:37.040 cancer, but health officials in Australia are saying, maybe you don't use sunscreen all the time.

00:38:44.140 So what are they recommending? Yeah. You know, and it's so funny because of probably the last

00:38:49.700 place on earth you would expect to be the first place to take the plunge on changing the

00:38:54.800 recommendations would have been Australia. Cause as you say, their skin cancer numbers are off the

00:38:59.460 charts, highest in the world, like more than twice as high as us or UK. And it's because they have

00:39:05.660 predominantly pale skin population in an extremely sunny place. So it's a really bad match. 1.00

00:39:10.980 So they get tons of skin cancer, but they also have some of the longest lived people

00:39:14.680 on the planet. So right there, it tells you that maybe like sun exposure isn't so bad for you,

00:39:21.300 even if you do have pale skin. So Australia, I think the reason that they ended up being the first 0.99

00:39:25.540 ones to change, to go away from the zero fund policy is because they've had to deal with this

00:39:30.580 like melanoma and skin cancer is in their face every day. They've had to like process it the most.

00:39:35.980 So maybe they're a little less scared of it in a sense. And I think it was more obvious to them

00:39:41.380 because they do a lot of research on it. They have a lot of the top skin cancer researchers in the

00:39:46.000 world and they could see that a lot of people were clearly getting more harm than benefit from

00:39:53.440 this zero sun policy. They were also saying that there was a lot more vitamin D deficiency in

00:39:58.560 Australia than they would ever expect for such a sunny place. So they actually started worrying that

00:40:02.800 people had taken the message to heart maybe too much. So they wanted to change their messaging

00:40:08.340 so that it was no longer this one size fits all message that only applied really to, should only

00:40:14.240 have applied to people with super pale skin. And they kind of broke up their messaging into three

00:40:19.740 groups, people with pale skin, people with dark skin, and then people in the middle and different

00:40:24.600 recommendations for each one. Pale skin, yeah, still use your sunscreen all the time pretty much.

00:40:28.660 But when the sun's not so bright, try to at least get outside with sunscreen on to get whatever.

00:40:34.340 They were focusing on D, but they know it's this other stuff too, to get whatever sun you can.

00:40:38.680 Middle group, get small amounts, still use sunscreen anytime the sun is pretty bright. But yeah, 0.93

00:40:46.140 work the edges of the day, the edges of the season, and make sure you are getting some direct

00:40:52.180 exposure. And then people with dark skin, they basically said like, you just should focus on

00:40:57.380 getting lots of sun. You don't need sunscreen except when you're going to be outside for an

00:41:02.520 extended period on a bright day. So that was quite controversial. And they caught a little bit of

00:41:08.620 hell for it. But I think they'll turn out to be the first penguin in the water, and then all the

00:41:13.880 other penguins will start to join them. Are you seeing a shift happen amongst American

00:41:18.860 dermatologists yet? No. So far, none. UK, yes. UK is starting to shift a little bit. Europe,

00:41:25.560 a little bit. America is going to be last on this for whatever reason. It's just kind of how we do

00:41:30.080 things. Yeah. So let's talk about how we can get sun exposure without increasing the risk of skin

00:41:35.760 cancer. Because some people might hear this news that, okay, sunlight's great for you. I'm just

00:41:39.920 going to get sun all the time and never wear sunscreen. That's not what these health officials

00:41:44.680 in Australia are advocating for. So based on the conversations you've had and the research you've

00:41:49.420 done, how can we get sun exposure and get all these health benefits without increasing our

00:41:54.620 chances of getting different types of skin cancer? Yeah. And on this, I'm quite sympathetic

00:41:59.380 with the dermatologists. Because yeah, you tell people that 10 minutes of sun is good for them.

00:42:04.360 And sure enough, some of them will go out there and get like six hours of sun. Because if a little's

00:42:08.960 good, then a lot's better, right? So that is definitely something worth worrying about. But I feel

00:42:15.060 like you just have to give the straight information, right? And then hopefully it's clear enough that

00:42:19.840 people can follow it. So Australia, when they put out their new position statement, they actually

00:42:25.040 have all these tables in the back. It's worth looking at that document that they created.

00:42:31.140 And the tables show for places with different UV indexes. So that's going to depend on where you

00:42:36.840 are in the globe and what season it is and the day, right? Like for your skin type and UV index,

00:42:42.740 how many minutes of exposed sunlight do you need to get a healthy vitamin D dose? So those will

00:42:49.800 translate to the US too. So those are worth checking out. But what it comes down to is for

00:42:55.780 most people on most days, you're either going to get it just walking about your day or you can get

00:43:01.480 it with, you know, 10 minutes or to 20 minutes of focused exposure. Yeah. And if you have darker skin,

00:43:08.260 you might have to extend the amount of time you're out there getting that sun exposure to get the

00:43:11.800 benefits. Quite a bit. And then the other part of it though, is that in higher latitude places,

00:43:16.420 like here in Vermont, we don't get any UVB. All the UVB is filtered by the atmosphere, like November

00:43:22.340 through March, probably. There's just too much atmosphere that the sun is coming through at that

00:43:26.780 low angle. So we don't get any UVB for like four months of the year. So, and you can save,

00:43:31.360 your body will save it up a little bit, but that's where you see a lot of vitamin D deficiencies is at

00:43:36.840 higher latitude, colder places. All right. So those Australian tables are a good place to

00:43:41.700 check to see how much sun exposure you should get each day and in each season, because it's going

00:43:45.880 to differ. And then when to use sunscreen, but in general, what are some good general guidelines for

00:43:51.520 using sunscreen? Because you're not, I mean, even though you're against sunscreen absolutism,

00:43:56.540 you're not against sunscreen altogether. So when should people put on sunscreen?

00:44:02.160 Anytime you think you might be out long enough to get a burn. And as I think you and I can both

00:44:06.580 test too, it's easier to get a burn than you think. Like you think, oh, I'm not going to get burned.

00:44:10.520 And then you get burned. It's easy to just get a little more than you think you're going to get.

00:44:14.520 So it makes sense to play it cautious and use it anytime, you know, you're going to be out for a

00:44:20.020 while. And unless it's like, you know, if it's winter, that's a whole different deal.

00:44:25.220 Yeah. All the dermatologists you've talked to who are sort of, you know, pro getting sunlight,

00:44:30.140 not using sunscreen all the time, they all agreed. You do not want to get sunburn. Like you want to

00:44:34.640 avoid sunburn as much as possible because that's what, that's what caused all those problems.

00:44:38.220 Yeah. That's just your skin cells dying and freaking out. And yeah.

00:44:43.400 Yeah. So for me, you know, I work from home. I typically don't wear sunscreen at all because

00:44:48.480 I'll just go outside, get some sun when I'm doing my early morning walks, doing chores and errands.

00:44:53.100 I will wear sunscreen when I'm going to be out for a long time, especially if I'm going to be at

00:44:56.800 altitude. So like, you know, my wife and I just went backpacking. I slather on the sunscreen.

00:45:01.720 You get, it's so easy to get sunburn when you're up in the mountains, you know, 10,000, 11,000,

00:45:06.140 12,000 feet, because you don't have the atmosphere filtering the radiation. So constantly applying

00:45:11.160 sunscreen then. And then when you're, when I'm skiing, cause like the sun reflects off the snow

00:45:17.760 and it's easy to get sunburn. And it's hard there because you think it's cold. So you really can't

00:45:21.640 feel anything, but you go in and your cheeks are red and you're like, ah, didn't put on enough

00:45:25.840 sunscreen.

00:45:26.060 Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I, yeah, totally. All those things. And yeah, like anytime, also anytime it's

00:45:31.900 going to help you get outside because you know, one of the criticisms that people get in these

00:45:36.000 observational studies that where it's like, oh, these people who are getting all the sun exposure

00:45:40.600 are healthier in all these ways and they have better longevity, blah, blah, blah. And one criticism

00:45:45.240 will be, well, but how do you, how can you tell it's the sun exposure? I mean, maybe there's just

00:45:50.080 things about being outside people that are exercising. Like in those studies, you always try to control for

00:45:54.740 exercise. So you're comparing people who are exercising the same amount, but still like there

00:45:58.880 could be other things about being outside that are just good for you. So, but so like, I don't see

00:46:03.820 the problem in that if the answer, you know, if the answer is get outside, right? So if sunscreen is

00:46:09.940 going to help you spend less time indoors, then I think it's all to the better.

00:46:14.800 Is anyone exploring, I don't know, like special sunscreens or ways people can get the benefits

00:46:20.060 of sunlight without raising their risk of skin cancer?

00:46:23.080 What people are doing is like, there's a lot of experiments using these narrow band UVB

00:46:28.820 lamps that a couple of companies are making now. I think this is going to become a big deal. So

00:46:34.000 they were first used for psoriasis treatment, I think. And they just produce a very narrow band of UV

00:46:40.460 somewhere around like 300, 310 nanometers. It's been used, you know, in psoriasis patients for a long

00:46:47.120 time, decades. And we know it does not cause skin cancer. It's not the type of wavelength that

00:46:52.700 damages DNA, but it does produce vitamin D. And it also seems to have these good immunological

00:47:00.620 effects. Like psoriasis is an autoimmune disease where your skin is being attacked by the immune

00:47:05.380 system. And it definitely has an excellent effect on psoriasis. It seems to work for MS. It even worked

00:47:13.120 for COVID, it seems like maybe. So I think you're going to see a lot more of like people using UVB.

00:47:21.340 So then there's not even an issue with skin cancer, but I'm still not convinced that you get all the

00:47:26.240 benefits from UVB lamps that you would get from sunlight.

00:47:29.860 Here's a controversial question. Tanning beds. Can you get the benefits of sunlight from a tanning bed?

00:47:36.960 Yeah, that's an interesting one. I don't know. I don't know the answer yet. So I'm working on a book

00:47:41.380 about all this. It'll be out in a couple of years by the time I've done all the research,

00:47:45.320 written the manuscript, and then gone through the production process. But I'll definitely have a

00:47:49.240 chapter on tanning beds in there. Right now, I don't know enough. I do know, like tanning beds do

00:47:54.260 raise your risk of skin cancer. So dermatologists are strongly anti-tanning bed. But they do definitely

00:48:01.600 give you some of the benefits, especially like, you know, the endorphins for sure. They give you that

00:48:06.620 hit of feeling good. They will improve your vitamin D a little bit. But again, because it's not

00:48:12.000 same as sunlight, I'm somewhat skeptical of them. But I don't know enough to say whether they're just

00:48:19.080 plain bad or whether they might have a use. Yeah. A few years ago here in Oklahoma,

00:48:24.260 we had a winter where it was just gray every day for like two months. And I was getting pretty

00:48:30.420 depressed. I was getting some seasonal affective disorder. I got brown skin. I'm swarthy.

00:48:34.620 So I need a lot of sunlight to get the benefits. And my wife said, you should just go to a tanning

00:48:40.760 bed. And I'm like, tan? I've never done that before. That's like what they do on Jersey Shore.

00:48:45.460 Like, I'm not going to. And so I did it. I did like the least amount. So I did the least amount

00:48:49.880 of time. I think it was just like two minutes. I mean, it was really short. And I felt better

00:48:54.580 afterwards. Totally. Yeah. But I'd be curious. Same thing. Yeah. I'd be interested

00:49:00.100 to see if instead of like tanning bed salons, you have UVB light salons where you stand in front of

00:49:07.240 a UVB light instead of going to a tanning bed to get the health benefits of sunlight.

00:49:12.620 Yeah. I'm curious too. And I suspect that the tanning beds are going to go in that direction,

00:49:16.040 whether it's more than just the UVB or just the UVB. But I bet they're going to try to,

00:49:21.200 you know, curate their wavelengths a little bit to try to maximize the good and avoid the bad.

00:49:27.040 And that's just a guess. Well, Rowan, this has been a great conversation. Is there some place

00:49:31.320 people can go to learn more about your work? For me, it would be rowanjacobson.com.

00:49:37.340 Rowanjacobson.com. And then look out for that book you've got coming out.

00:49:40.360 Yeah. In Defense of Sunlight, 2026.

00:49:42.900 2026. I think that's safe. Safe prediction.

00:49:45.560 And in the meantime, if you're listening, go out and get some sun. You're a plant. That's one of the

00:49:49.880 cool takeaways. I forget. Like, we're little plants. We need water and we need sun.

00:49:53.980 So we get some sun. Synthesize. Yeah.

00:49:55.540 Yeah. Well, Rowan Jacobson, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:49:58.820 Thanks. It was great being here.

00:50:01.180 My guest today was Rowan Jacobson. You can find more information about his work at his website,

00:50:04.600 rowanjacobson.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash sunlight,

00:50:08.660 where you can find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic.

00:50:18.380 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at

00:50:22.340 artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast archives. And while you're there,

00:50:25.400 sign up for our newsletter. We've got a daily option and a weekly option. They're both free.

00:50:29.320 It's the best way to stay on top of what's going on at AOM. And if you haven't done so already,

00:50:33.180 I'd appreciate it to take one minute to get your review on the podcast or Spotify. It helps that a

00:50:36.480 lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or

00:50:39.980 family member who would think you're doing something out of it. As always, thank you for the

00:50:43.400 continued support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay. Remind you to listen to AOM podcast,

00:50:47.400 but put what you've heard into action.

00:50:55.400 Thank you.

00:50:56.400 Thank you.

00:50:57.400 Thank you.

00:50:59.400 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - July 08, 2024

The Sunscreen Debate — Are We Blocking Our Way to Better Health？

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