I do not get if it’s a massive and long-running marketing campaign that has brainwashed the entire population, if it’s because many living in US and UK have a very white skin tone thus burn easily, or what else. Skin cancer is a fact of life, but for a species that evolved in the sun, I do not believe one bit that sun exposure, which incidentally is linked to many benefits because it’s so bloody normal, is something that can only be dealt with modern technology and we should be deathly afraid of it. Sure, UV radiation can cause mutations, but our immune system has evolved over billions of years to deal with this exact problem.
By all means use sunscreen if you have to spend a lot of time in the sun and risk a very unpleasant sunburn, but I wish someone would explain the Anglo obsession with daily sunscreen routine.
Yeah, most of the time our immune system deals with it, but sometimes it misses one roge cell and you've got cancer. That's why you want to limit your exposure to mutations even if you're somewhat adapted to deal with them.
Then it's a matter of looking at studies and statistics and deciding for yourself. Personally, I'll keep putting on sunscreen, as I sunburn easily ;)
> Usually we close our eyes in reflex due to intense light from the Sun, but on day of an eclipse, the intensity of sunlight is decreased and we can view the Sun through naked eyes. While we watch a solar eclipse without any protection to our eyes, the ultraviolet rays penetrate our eyes and cause retinal burn, leading to loss of central vision.
[1]: https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/partial-solar-eclips...
After my mother got it and had a huge chunk taken out of her leg when I was very young, we have had it drilled into our heads that the sun was going to kill us and we needed to cover up and lather in sun screen for even the slightest possibility of sun exposure.
Obviously that didn't help much as many of us still got it anyway, hah!
But yea there are some folks who are terrified of the sun. I personally think 15-20 minutes unfiltered sunlight is good for me, but beyond that I'm looking for the nearest shade or trying to cover up.
There's always going to be some risk from UV exposure, but as the parent comment points out we're evolved to deal with it and even to rely on it. There's research showing that low amounts of cellular damage is actually beneficial as it triggers cellular repair mechanisms or aptosis of senecent cells. Even here other commenters point out how exposure improved their skin or vision.
However that natural evolved state doesn't include sitting inside all week and then going outside on the weekend and getting completely toasted sunburnt!
Doing that and getting completely sunburnt overwhelms our normal cellular repair mechanism, the immune system response, etc. It's much more likely a rogue cell evades the immune system when it's swamped with such cells.
Personally I avoid sunscreen if possible for short excursions but will use it if going to the pool as I'm indoors more these years and paler.
The UV light polymerizes collagen in presence of vitamin B. They did experiments by repairing cornea that way:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3018104/
"The aim of this study is to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of riboflavin-ultraviolet type A (UV-A) light rays induced cross-linking of corneal collagen in improving visual acuity and in stabilizing the progression of keratoconic eyes.
...
The eyes were saturated with riboflavin solution and were subjected for 30 min under UV-A light
...
Cross-linking was safe and an effective therapeutical option for progressive keratoconus."
I think that this is probably one of the reasons why suntanned skin usually looks like it is in better condition mechanically-wise.
Another my favorite Sun exposure related correlation - vitamin D deficiency and autism, as couple studies on Somali immigrant population in Minnesota and Sweden - where such dark skinned population naturally gets very low on vitamin D - showed such correlation as autism rates in that population is higher than back there in Somali (and that would explain the correlation of low sunlight expo.
And my favorite pet theory is that Neanderthals with their large eyes adapted to the Northern latitudes were significantly impaired by spike of UV radiation - getting highly increased rate of early cataract and other eyesight damage - during that thousand years of magnetic field polar swap 40K years ago, and that caused them to lose to the Cro-Magnon who was coming out of Africa with more dark and smaller eyes more adapted to higher UV levels which are natural to Africa.
Apparently there has been an sharp rise in people coming in with retinal damage from staring at the sun. They didn't go into details why someone would do that, but reading this on HN I can start to guess.
There's seems to be a concerted effort at making people afraid of the sun. My guess is because the sun fixes a lot of problems, and problems mean profit.
Seriously, take a step back. If spending time in / looking at the sun was dangerous we wouldn't be here.
Planning on being out a full day under the summer sun as a very pale north European? Slob on all the sunscreen that you can and hide in the shade when possible.
A day out in mid September / mid March when the sun is not looking to murder you? Revel in it. Soak it up. Be a plant.
Aldous Huxley was taken in, unfortunately: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Seeing
I would guess it's dangerous nonsense, though there are plausible claims that shortsightedness is associated with not spending much time outside as a child so perhaps there's a slight link with something that isn't nonsense.
I do think we also have observation on our side here, as it has been seen for a long time that people with outdoor occupations have lower skin cancer rates than indoor (eg "Occupational sunlight exposure and melanoma in the U.S. Navy", 1990). Why those stories never broke through to the mainstream is an interesting question.
(I know they're out of fashion now, but the paleo community was talking about doing ~10 minutes of direct sun a day almost two decades ago, with strict guidance to avoid burning, roughly based on the above reasons)
AFAIK that has nothing to do with the sun but rather with looking at things at a larger distance than at home.
An obvious thing perhaps worth mentioning: if you're shortsighted (or longsighted) then you see better in bright sunlight because the iris closes, giving you greater depth of field, so that might make people think/feel that sunlight "cures" myopia.
(On the other hand, if you have excellent eyesight then you see better in less bright conditions because your vision is being limited by diffraction at the aperture.)
Why not? People are still arguing in 2025 that the vast majority of the world's climate scientists are wrong about climate change, and there are even some who unironically argue that the Earth is flat. Science is dead. Long live "Whatever I want to believe is true and you're all wrong!"
Also important to remember evolution operates at a population level, not individual. We are descended from females that were able to survive at least pregnancy and carry the second to term, but it doesn't matter if they die in the second pregnancy. We're descended from males that were able to mate with said females, but they could have died very shortly after mating. So if you follow "what we evolved with" then that's all you're likely to get.
Then the problem is light skin tone, and the advice to wear sunscreen always, only applies to them, hence my doubts.
I do not get sunburnt if I go buy groceries or if I spend 1 hour outside, like most ethnicities on Earth; yet if I dare question the dogma of sunscreen, I get downvoted, which makes me wonder if it's at all rational. It boggles my mind how it has become a kind of innocent yet taboo argument on the (English-speaking) internet.
Just google it. I mean, there's plenty of articles that say you need to wear it even if you plan to stay indoors all day. WTF.
This assumes we understand how these things work in the first place. It’s very likely our understanding of evolution is incomplete.
I make this mistake a lot:
1. See thing that’s been done a long time a certain way
2. Modern recommendation is don’t do thing
3. Revised modern recommendation says “actually wait, do thing”
4. Revised modern recommendation is now ok because our incomplete model has been updated, whereas it should have always been ok because it’s been that way for a long time
Put another way: we should give more weight to a repeated pattern observed over thousands of years and heavily question any science that goes against it. Both sides are just estimations, but nowadays it’s almost assumed “old ways bad”. Way too many cases that end up being “way humans have operated for millennia is actually ok”.
Having more melanin decreases the effective dose because any photon that melanin absorbs isn't going to be absorbed by your DNA.
For the naysayers, if looking at the sun is so bad, why is it not considered bad to look at the sun's reflection on the water? Additionally, when the sun is low, if you look at the brightness of the sunlight, it is less bright than some artificial light sources, and doesn't hurt to look at. How could this be bad?
The mainstream media in the US has never been great at communicating any story with nuance or depth. In the 80s and 90s, foods that we've eaten forever were being demonized, like eggs. In 2020, people were being told they shouldn't go outside lest they come within 100 feet of another person.
To their credit, the general population has never had a shorter attention span and so easily hoodwinked into believing misleading claims.
Australia's sun recommendations for people of differing skin types is not bad: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/tailored-protection-aust...
Who said it's not? It may hurt you as fast but it's still bad for you.
https://www.aao.org/eye-health/diseases/photokeratitis-snow-...
I live in a very sunny desert area and it's kind of funny when people assume people from here would be "more tanned". We stay in the shade, the sun will kill you! Anyone working outside is wearing wide brimmed hats and typically has all of their skin covered with clothing even in the heat, people typically have their faces covered with cloth as well.
Spending time outside with minimal clothing in direct midday sun is a modern weird behavior.
Because it's more about skincare for physical attraction and less about the cancer. Sun ages your skin with wrinkles, sagging, hyperpigmentation, etc.
This isn't specific to Anglo nations too. Any country where being "fair skinned" is more desirable will have lots of demand for sunscreen.
People who spend more time in the sun have a low-moderate risk of melanoma, but higher risk of other skin cancers, vs those who spend more time indoors having a lower risk of non-melanoma skin cancer and a moderate-higher risk of melanoma cancer.
But I have noticed that my eyes get weaker after spending a lot of time indoors, like if I'm sick. Getting enough time in sunlight seems to be heavily correlated with better eyesight, both in my personal experience fighting farsightedness as a man in his 50s and with studies done on children regarding nearsightedness.
And there ya go, the rallying cry of every conspiracy theorist: "They don't want you to know, because money!"
Seriously, take a step back.
Yeah, seriously.
My (anecdotal, subjective) experience is that it helps. Both vitamin D and nitric oxide are good rationales for that.
This would be economically impossible at a tanning salon.
If you like to be tan, it turns out that a minute at a time, sporadically but regularly, is enough to train the skin to be somewhat tan all the time. Presumably with far less skin damage than longer more random sun exposures, or typical duration salon sessions.
I also have bright rope LEDs surrounding a few of my room ceilings, hidden behind coving. That light reflects smoothly off the entirety of the white ceilings. A great combination of very high intensity lighting, that is also gentle, diffuse and calming. Summer days, indoors, all year round.
There is nothing subjective about the mental benefits of the lights. I am far more alert during the day, and sleep better at night, even in summer. Rationale: We were meant to live outside.
I have worked at home my whole career, so I tune things.
I also enjoy the real sun!
Additionally, if you've ever seen a portrait of a human in the UV spectrum, you'll notice how shiny they look. I'm sure modern people have much less protective oils in their skin as a result of increased bathing required by societal and sanitation norms of modern urbanized habitation.
Tho I agree with economist article, sun exposure is very good for you, just not high UV exposure.
My spouse is asian and I'm N Euro - I would kill to have skin that just tans no matter how much sun you get. I think I've seen her get burns twice in over a decade and we do a lot of beach time.
I'm find myself aghast when I travel to different environments and observe people laying in direct sun almost naked. Not that I think they shouldn't, it's just such a stark contrast to my norm. I'll end up with a painful sunburn if I venture outside uncovered for more than 10 minutes at home.
Is it because they got exposed to sun or is it because of the "sun-seeking behavior", which probably means more physical activity?
Either way, it's too soon to be throwing away our sunscreen.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/cancer/screening-advice-thats...
Emphasis on “may” - this is hardly a gold standard study. Living in sunnier/warmer climates as a proxy for UV exposure as opposed to lifestyle differences afforded by such a climate, regional culture differences, etc. makes all of this very dubious to me.
I’m going to keep wearing my sunscreen most of the time when I need to be in direct sun, and continue regular screening for skin cancer.
Also, Dr. Roger Seheult has some strong opinions on this as well. Considers sun exposure one of the pillars of health and avoiding the sun to be as dangerous as smoking.
I am intrigued -- please can you share any publicly available image of this solution? I'm not sure what to google search, or what it would even look like. But I am interested in feeling better while stuck indoors all day.
As a person w/ keratoconus I have read a fair bit about this treatment, corneal collagen crosslinking with riboflavin (C3R).
It does not repair the damage caused by keratoconus. It stabilizes the cornea and slows or halts progression. The collagen in the cornea naturally crosslinks (likely due to UV exposure) over our lives. My our late 30s our corneas are stable. For someone with keratoconus, where the cornea becomes progressively misshapen, stabilizing the tissue with UV (enhanced by riboflavin) slows or prevents further damage.
I was just a few years too early in my diagnosis to benefit from C3R. My eyes have been stable for the last 10 - 12 years. I wish I could have had C3R when my condition was first diagnosed back in my 20s.
My strategy is to get short sun exposures, use sunscreen only when I'm going to be out long enough to get burnt, and also do my dermatology appointments.
https://meaningness.com/sad-light-lumens
His other writing is great too, but much more philosophical which may or may not be your cup of tea.
Also, local climates differ dramatically. A couple of my worst sunburns in my life were on extremely gray days on the California coast. It is easy to fool yourself into thinking the sun isn't strong when you don't feel the heat of it. But on those kinds of days, it's just diffuse UV blasting from every direction.
I found it instructive when I got photochromatic eye glasses. Since they are UV-activated, it is like carrying a UV detection instrument around with a heads-up display. It really helped me get a better sense for what conditions and hours of the day have significant UV in my normal daily life.
There are also studies suggesting that low-level UV exposure lowers risk of death by more than what can be explained by serum vitamin D levels alone, suggesting other unknown mechanisms at play.
If they claim causation in the paper it is usually controlled for, if they just claim a link it might not be.
Science is good, but restraining all decisions behind FUTON biased double-blind longitudinal meta-analysis is not only unreasonably cognitiviely expensive, but not even the greatest idea.
When making decisions to personally guide your life, you can also base them on values, heuristics, paternal advice, common wisdom, etc...
It's obvious that the ideal amount of sunlight is somewhere between 0 and 100% of the time, I don't need to read a "The Economist" article with a clickbaity, possibly misrepresented title of a nuanced meta-analysis.
The proof is on this comment, it's never enough data, the conclusion is always that you need more funding:
>360,000 light-skinned Brits
>Emphasis on “may” - this is hardly a gold standard study
I didn't even need 1 subject, you need more than 360,000. You are out there running kubernetes for a blog and asking for more EC2 instances on top of a 3M$ bill, I'm out here running the whole company on 2 raspberry pis.
If wealth can be achieved by increasing resources or reducing necessities, I have achieved the nirvana of wisdom of the second kind while you still strive to amass more information to make a decision:
Sun good
That's a pretty good net survival rate [3], but it's not perfect. And it's possible that less care in avoiding excessive sun exposure could lead to any cancers being more aggressive. However, I don't have a reference for that musing, so feel free to ignore it.
[0]: Invasive means the tumor has left the tissue it started in.
[1]: https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/melan.html
[2]: It would be higher if the official method for calculating net survival didn't, in my opinion, needlessly bias itself against cancer patient survival. The last time I reviewed the methodology notes, they compared daily hazards of death between cancer patients and everyone else. But, if the cancer patients had a lower hazard for a day, the difference was treated as zero instead of negative. This is a hill I'll die on, because their method pretends any confounding variables not in the model have no effect. Patients who catch melanoma early are probably less likely to die soon compared to those of similar age, race, sex, and location. An early diagnosis likely means they care enough about their health to visit doctors regularly and make good use of those visits.
Example: would you put on sunscreen when playing volleyball at the beach at 4:30pm, if the UV index at that time is 2 (UVI scale)? That seems completely unnecessary imo. And many people are vitamin d deficient anyway, so the minor sun exposure would certainly do more good.
If it’s around mid-day and/or the UV index is higher, say 4+, then i 100% agree with you that it’s prudent to apply sunscreen.
The study says sun good. But the studies being described in the UV are specifically comparing people who stay indoors vs people who get exposed to UV by being outdoors. The studies listed are not looking at application of sunscreen, or wearing clothes to block UV, etc.
This generally makes sense; stop being cooped up indoors and do things outside, but also wear UV protection.
Thinking you are somehow holding the authors into account is akin to doubting a paper's veracity because it has "too many authors" or some other meaningless if not ironic standard.
The sun does get strong enough to burn here, but not for much of the year - especially considering the relatively high % cloud cover (not Seattle high maybe, but high). Skin cancer cases here are AFAIK most commonly related to overseas travel or people with outdoor lifestyles in the southwest of the country.
The way western culture glorifies direct exposure to the sun is always hilarious to me, everyone lining up to burn their skin for hours on end to "catch up" on sunlight exposure. Instead of just playing an outdoor sport under some trees or being outdoors in the morning/evening when sunlight is a lot less potent and weather is a lot more pleasant.
Obviously they live lots of other places now, but evolution is slow to catch up.
If you drive through France for a day, you can literally see the change from north to south, "could be Dutch" in the far north to "could be Spanish" in the south. Of course lots of people move around but I'm talking about averages.
Using this line of thinking is at best an attempt at rationalizing what lifestyle you wanted to live anyway.
Missing nuance: Outside for how long? And how strong is the sun?
Even with my pasty Northern European complexion, I'm skipping the sunscreen for a 20 minute walk to lunch in November. But for a 10 hour hike above treeline in July? I'll be re-applying every two hours.
Speak for yourself. Thanks to my Celtic genetics, I get sunburnt if I put my phone brightness too high. ;)
There's a reason the indigenous Australians stayed dark skinned after 40,000 years - a time frame more than long enough for the Irish to turn red-haired and pale; as a trait it's relatively fast evolving, Europe probably evolved most/all of its variation since the last ice age.
Or autism among Somalis causes them, or their parents, to want to immigrate to Minnesota and Sweden?
An aside for my fellow wookies: moles can form under hair!
The description from GP, and the photos in the article you linked, seem like polar opposites of each other.
Excellent idea. In my temperate climate, I use the outdoor method, with one further tweak: Cover the head and arms, which get too much inadvertent exposure anyway during daily activity.
This study was "just a grad student"?
Sunscreen reduces vitamin D production, but it doesn't stop it. Wearn sunscreen. Get screened. And don't stay indoors for fear of UV.
It seems that autism got politicized and thus such various correlations, which may or may not be real causations, don't seem to get enough of proper scientific attention/resources. I mean, for example folic acid deficiency causes spina bifida, and it wouldn't be out-of-this-world if vitamin D (which is steroid) deficiency (or some other deficiency) would have affected prenatal development and structure of the brain which is just another body organ. Instead we spend tremendous amount of attention and energy on alleged vaccine-autism connection which hasn't been established even as mere correlation.
The camera dramatically auto-reduced the brightness in all the pictures. So imagine the room summer sun bright. But not harsh, very soft shadowing.
Where the ceiling shows shadow in the middle of each border, it is really just a tiny bit less bright than at the edge of the borders.
And those LED strips are blinding, even though they look off!
In the evening I turn off the ceiling lights, and the room is lit warmly by the low-lumen crystal lights from below.
The sleep cycle isn't something that comes natural to me, so I work all the angles.
Basically it takes into account things like ozone measurements from satellites, latitude, forecasted cloud cover, and distance from sun (time of year).
See section “Calculating the UV index” here:
https://www.epa.gov/sunsafety/learn-about-uv-index
It’s not intended to be realtime. It’s more about understanding, generally, what the risk is.
How about not making any public messaging so black and white. B&W messaging leads to polarised ideas on healthcare and everything else...
</rant>
Biology is complex.
A sibling comment mentions the ozone layer, but I severely doubt it varies enough to be a source of inaccuracy.
But when it comes to things which are very probably "mostly beneficial for most people most of the time - but (obviously) not always beneficial for all the people all the time", there's a reluctance to say anything unless you've got study data to fully support everything you say into "the nines". But the world is full of things that are hard, expensive or impossible to study experimentally with that kind of rigor.
So as long as you're not getting sum burns, sun exposure is actually better for you.
In some decades we'll look at the whole sun avoidance policy as those doctors prescribing cigarettes a century ago.
That's a very common misconception. Being alive after 40 is quite necessary if you are a member of a gregarious species that (bar exceptions) always lives in community. And it's not only about the survival of your own genes, it's about the survival of the genes of the whole community.
And sure enough, if you look up any details on the studies in question, they are highly questionable. Vastly different populations studied with very weak controls. For example, sunscreen use -- both chemical and physical, i.e. hats -- was not controlled for. Seems like a big problem since that's the primary claim being made! And it seems like such an obvious thing. It makes one wonder why it was omitted.
The facts of the "status quo" of sun exposure dangers, on the other hand, have quite a lot more going for them, both in terms of study quality and in terms of physical explanation/interpretation. UV radiation physically damages DNA, even when you don't burn. Tanning is a response to skin cell damage, so any additional melanin production in your skin is indication that your DNA is being damaged. Damaged DNA means when your cells reproduce, they reproduce the damage and/or otherwise mutate. If that damage or mutation happens to be cancerous, then you have a big problem. Tanning, contrary to what people seem to think, doesn't inoculate you against skin cancer or damage. It merely helps absorb a higher percentage of UV radiation -- meaning your skin is still getting damaged, just at a slightly lower rate (a helpful, though marginal, evolutionary advantage).
There are a number of other types of indirect light fixtures (and direct/indirect fixtures, most commonly as suspended linear fixtures with LEDs on both the top and bottom of the fixture).
The first picture in the article linked below has an architectural elevation diagram (basically a side profile) of cove lighting: https://www.architectmagazine.com/technology/lighting/cove-l...
This is The Economist; they don't use bylines, and their articles are all anonymous.
Error in the first sentence. At first I thought that's a bad thing, but then also, probably more likely not written/assisted by an AI. Haha.
Some of that is tied to our daily 85° dew points but once the sun goes down the dp feels livable.
But even without high heat and humidity, sunlight feels relentlessly, painfully bright. The best I can hope for is to ignore it.
Conversely, cool cloudy days feel like the relief after a long, bad headache. And fog is the finest weather there is.
The byline is “The Economist”, and the lack of links is the house style, like a printed newspaper.
A relic from the times when the name and reputation of the institution alone was enough to earn your trust.
Personally I still find them a high-quality source, especially because they are a weekly publication based in the UK and distanced (but not entirely removed) from the bullshit of the US media cycle.
Shouldn’t we expect a much stronger correlation?
Clearly, there's a third variable that causes both. Since we don't understand what the heck it is and I like being in the sun despite being pale (nearly never getting burned, although I did get burned a lot as a teen), I personally call it SUN MAGIC.
“Solar urticaria is a rare condition where the skin reacts to specific wavelengths of light rather than the overall UV intensity. The UV index is a general measure of the total amount of erythema-causing UV radiation (mainly UVB) that can cause sunburn in the average person.
But in solar urticaria, the trigger might be UVA, visible light, or even a narrow band of wavelengths — and the UV index doesn’t capture that nuance.
So it’s not that the forecast is wrong — just that the UV index isn’t designed to reflect the sensitivity profile of solar urticaria.”
In other words, you’re (literally) a special case. :)
But also let’s not forget the things that tend to correlate with moderate sun exposure: Fresher air, exercise, social activity, daylight exposure on the eyes, stimulation of all the senses, etc.
Its like any poisson process, a recent event does not inherently lower the probability density for the next event.
Achieving the minimum necessary for reproduction is not representative of the distribution of reproductive success scores.
I'm not sure that's true over the very long run.
We're talking about a proscribed health practice that results in continuing discomfort and sickness. Even if the benefit manifests as predicted, I'm skeptical it can make up for the low quality of life.
edit: I'm far from alone in this. When I share my aversion to sunlight, I find many more folks who feel similarly, than I do people who are puzzled by it.
Economists have a habit of wandering off into other fields and misapplying statistical methods developed for economics. See their work in anti-parastic studies and all sorts of gross wannabe sociology research.
I'll wait until Chocrane steps in and says something before rejecting decades of scientific consensus.
However, this doesn't mean one should forget about the current consensus. This is just one paper, and it takes more than that to offset the current knowledge.
[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43630-025-00743-6
I’d love to see a study where people wear a meter to sample exposure. My mom was an avid gardener who never wore sunscreen - she dressed appropriately with a hat.
How about looking at descendants of fair-skinned Britains in sunnier climes?
Australia has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world. This is due to a combination of factors: very high levels of ultraviolet (UV) radiation, outdoor lifestyles, and a largely fair-skinned population that is more vulnerable to sun damage. Rates of both melanoma (the deadliest form of skin cancer) and non-melanoma skin cancers are higher in Australia than anywhere else. New Zealand follows closely behind.
> Tanning is a response to skin cell damage
I don't think this is true in any meaningful sense. Damage is part of life. Your body repairs minor damage and it is usually a good thing to trigger the repair pathways once in a while. This is also the basis for exercise - your muscles and tendons are damaged when you work out, but they get rebuilt stronger. Your DNA is also repaired, and turning repair pathways on can sometimes improve tissue quality/collagen production or get rid of imperfections - this is the basis of microneedling and cosmetic techniques, some of which involve light exposure. UV therapy is also a treatment for psoriasis (skin inflammation).
If any amount of sunlight is bad, ask yourself why melanoma typically occurs on the trunk region (in men) or legs (women) rather than say the face or arms. Those are regions that are normally hidden, but are then suddenly exposed when you go shirtless/at the beach.
The most dangerous thing is to go straight from non-exposure to high exposure. But if you gradually increase exposure, the body has many ways of dealing with non-overwhelming amounts of damage. Damage can in fact trigger repair which is often beneficial, as this article alludes to.
Most importantly, the more beneficial UV rays (UVB) for vitamin D production are weaker than the more harmful ones (UVA), so any sunscreen or glass that "blocks UV" necessarily blocks all UVB before you get close to blocking all UVA. Nothing can actually block 100% of UVA. But let's say you slather sunscreen on every time you go out. Now imagine one day you forget it or run out of it or for whatever emergency reason can't apply it. Now your pale unready skin is exposed to a large dose which could actually do more damage than your body is ready to repair.
The best time to get UVB is actually around solar noon. So, depending on your skin type, the best thing to do is to expose yourself to sunlight for short amounts of time (start with 1 minute if you want) without sunscreen before applying sunscreen. Then gradually increase the non-sunscreen time as your skin turns up repair pathways (and you get tanner).
Primary institute of skin cancer in Australia: https://www.cancer.org.au/cancer-information/causes-and-prev...
See number 2.
I'm hypothesising you may live in a place where skin cancer is not a big issue?
In the past, people, in general, remained in the general vicinity of where they were born. Different skin types adapted to different amounts of sunlight.
We also didn't have the knowledge to link death and disease with their actual causes.
That said, in the past, people used variety of materials for sunscreen without the knowledge that "too much radiation bad". Mud/clay/etc seems to be something multiple cultures over time used. In cultures where working in the sun is common, wearing long clothes that blocks the sun is also a thing, and works like sunscreen.
Given that last point, I think baking in the sun while nearly naked to the point of developing disease is a relatively recent cultural thing, but that's just a guess.
Since then, I’ve made a point to get a bit of sunlight each day. Over time, I noticed my energy and mood improved. That small, consistent exposure to sunlight really does seem to make a subtle but meaningful difference in both body and mind.
This is an outdated view, evidence shows muscle/tendon growth/adaptation occurs primarily via mechanical tension and metabolic stress, with damage playing a minimal or even counterproductive role. hypertrophy happens despite it, not because of it.
[The development of skeletal muscle hypertrophy through resistance training: the role of muscle damage and muscle protein synthesis. Schoenfeld et al., 2017](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29282529/)