A little more sunshine might help you live longer, according to
a study published Monday that suggests for some people health
benefits from the sun outweigh the risk of skin cancer.
Sunlight prompts the body to produce vitamin D, but fear of skin
cancer is keeping many people in the dark, depriving them of an
important protection from a range of diseases, researchers
said.
"The skin cancer risk is there but the health benefits from some
sun exposure is far larger than the risk," said Johan Moan, a
researcher at the Institute for Cancer Research in Oslo, who led
the study. "What we find is modest sun exposure gives enormous
vitamin D benefits."
A number of studies have found protective effects from higher
vitamin D intake for some cancers and ailments such as rickets,
osteoporosis and diabetes, Moan said. Certain foods contain vitamin
D but the body's main source is the sun.
The researchers calculated that given the same amount of time
spent outside, people living just below the equator in Australia
produced 3.4 times more vitamin D than people in Britain and 4.8
times more than Scandinavians.
This means even though rates of internal cancers such as colon
cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer and prostate cancer rise from
north to south, people in the sunnier latitudes were less likely to
die from the diseases, the researchers said.
"The current data provide a further indication of the beneficial
role of sun-induced vitamin D for cancer prognosis," said Richard
Setlow of the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National
Laboratory, who worked on the study.
Moan, whose findings were published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, recommended daily sun exposure for
about half the time it takes a person to get sunburn.
(Agencies via Xinhua News Agency January 9, 2008)