Why we should all be getting more sun: new book

Living in Vermont, science and nature writer Rowan Jacobsen noticed the effects the seasons had on him.Summers were gorgeous, but the grey winters were brutal and left him lagging.“I felt as if my cells didn’t work,” he writes in his new book, “In Defense of Sunlight, The Surprising Science of Sun Exposure” (Scribner).But, during sunnier times, when he got some early morning rays, he writes “It was as if some nutrient was pouring from the sky.”While the sun and its UV rays have been vilified in recent decades, Jacobsen offers up a counter narrative.“The science consistently showed that people who received ample amounts of sun exposure lived longer, healthier lives than people who didn’t,” he writes.He said his “wake-up call” came after reading a “paradigm-shifting” 2018 report in The Journal of Cell Science.Chinese neurology researchers found that those who had sun exposure were healthier and lived longer, even when they suffered from diabetes or heart attacks.“Like most people, I’d had it drilled into me …that the sun was bad news, the primary cause of skin cancer” and that the only acceptable sunlight on unprotected skin was “zero,” Jacobsen writes.

He notes that the suncare business is booming, worth an estimated $15 billion, largely thanks to heavily promoting protection against sunburn and possibly skin cancer.But skin cancer rates haven’t gone down as sunscreen sales have risen.“The European Journal of Dermatology published a meta-analysis of the 29 studies of sunscreen use and skin cancer that had been done since the 1970s,” he writes.

“All of them showed a higher risk of skin cancer among the sunscreen users.”In 1979, intense lobbying by the industry convinced the Food and Drug Administration to allow cosmetics companies to claim that the use of sunscreen might help reduce the risk of skin cancer.Sales skyrocketed, but so have skin cancer rates.Jacobsen believes that safe exposure to the sun’s rays can a...