Love healthy skin AND love the sun? This video is for I'm the first to admit that being in the sun has amazing benefits on our mood. The warmth from infrared rays feels so good on our skin and being outside in the fresh sunshine has a huge impact on our emotional well being. But, those benefits come at a cost to our skin health, so it's all about balance. I'm here to empower you with knowledge so you can love your skin AND the sun!
Let's dive in with UV light. It's a known human carcinogen. It causes DNA damage and skin cancer. It also accounts for most of the signs of aging that you see on the skin: fine lines, wrinkles, brown spots, loss of elasticity.
Being in the sun has some amazing benefits- the warmth from infrared rays feels so good on our skin, and being outside in the sunlight has a huge impact on our mood and our emotional well being.
The UV rays you need to worry most about are UVB and UVA.
UVB has shorter wavelengths that don’t penetrate very far into the skin, but they do major damage. UVB = think B for BURN, contributes to sunburn, skin cancer and precancers, but also contributes to vit D synthesis (more on that later).
UVA has longer wavelengths which penetrate deeper into your skin. Think "A" for aging breakdown of collagen fine lines, wrinkles.
BOTH UVA and UVB contribute to CANCER
Both dampen, or diminish your skin’s immune response. That can be a GOOD thing and can be a BAD thing.
Obviously, if you have a weakened or dampened immune system you’re more susceptible to infection but you’re also more susceptible to skin cancer- the immune system plays a major role in preventing cancer cells from developing in the skin. Dermatologists know that patients who have an organ transplant, and are on immunosuppressive therapies to prevent them from rejecting their organs, are MUCH more likely to get skin cancer. Well, UV rays are immunosuppressive, so not only do they cause the DNA damage that leads to skin cancer but they also prevent your own immune system from stopping those cancer cells from multiplying.
Now a dampened immune system can actually be HELPFUL in certain skin conditions. Classic example is psoriasis- where the immune system in the skin is OVER reacting. Psoriasis patients know their skin gets better in the summer or on vacation at the beach. Some acne patients may notice their acne improves over the summer months- and part of that is because the immune system is dampened. Unfortunately, while a skin condition might improve with the sun, your risk for skin cancer and aging increases at the same time, so again, there’s that balance.
Now, let's turn to Vitamin D. This is a question I get ALL the time:
“Dr. Bowe, don’t I need some sun exposure to get my vitamin D? And isn’t the vitamin D you get from the sun the best kind?”
There’s no SAFE way to get vit D from the sun. Your skin does produce vit D, but to do so, it requires UVB exposure- UVB is a known carcinogen, so you can’t get your skin to produce vit D without doing DNA damage and increasing your skin of skin cancer.
Acc to the latest studies: sunscreen use does not cause vit D deficiency
(ref: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9418761/)
The amount of UVA in sun exposure can IMPAIR vit D synthesis in the skin. So UVB can activate it, but UVA degrades it. Vit D is exquisitely sensitive to sunlight! Once it’s produced in the skin, if you STAY in the sun- the sun breaks it down! So in winter, when you have more uva than uvb (like on a cloudy day or when you’re at home near a window), exposure to sunlight is actually more likely to break down the vit D in your skin than it is to trigger new vit D production.
(ref: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19155...)
In my opinion, we should be getting Vitamin D through diet. Talk to your doctor about dose, but don’t justify your sun exposure by saying you’re getting your vit D.
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