Should you get some sunlight, or should you lather yourself with sunscreen and avoid the sun like a plaque? Which one is better for your skin.
One of my customers took a quiz at acne.org and one of the questions was about sunlight. The answer he got back shocked him.
“While the sun is important for the production of vitamin D, especially if you do not eat dairy products, excess sun exposure is actually skin damage. While the sun feels good, it may bite back with acne in the weeks following exposure.”
I agree with this completely. Unfortunately many people miss the point of this message. The operative word is excess sun exposure.
Sunlight is absolutely essential for good health. But that doesn’t mean more is better. It’s the same with exercise. You need enough sunlight – not too much, not too little.
Exposure to sunlight benefits your health in many ways. You get vitamin D from sunlight. It helps you to sleep better. It makes you energetic and happier. It can kill bacteria from your blood. Just to give you few examples.
Sunlight is the only viable source of vitamin D
Since the acne.org quizz mentioned vitamin D let’s talk about it briefly. Sunlight is the only practical source of vitamin D.
In Clear for Life I quoted a study where the researchers measured blood vitamin D levels from people after they’ve been on a tanning bed. They were exposed to amount of UV radiation that leads to very minor sunburn (your skin gets a bit red and is back to normal the next day). The researchers found that those people had blood vitamin D levels of equivalent of taking 25’000 IU of vitamin D.
To put that into a perspective a multivitamin supplement usually has 400 IU of vitamini D and vitamin D supplement has about 1000 IU. A glass of whole milk has less than 100 IU.
As you can see no other source of vitamin D even comes close to what you’ll get from sunlight.
This is a bit of a problem for people living in the Northern latitudes. During the winter months sun rays hit the northern part of the globe in such an angle that most of the UV rays bounce back to space. So in such latitudes your skin won’t make vitamin D from sunlight. You have to either use tanning beds or take vitamin D supplements.
-
Clear for Life – The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin