←back to thread

277 points petethomas | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.407s | source
Show context
namuol ◴[] No.45305025[source]
> A study published last year, for instance, examined medical data from 360,000 light-skinned Brits and found that greater exposure to UV radiation—either from living in Britain’s sunnier southern bits rather than the darker north, or from regularly using sunbeds—was correlated with either a 12% and 15% lower risk, respectively, of dying, even when the raised risk of skin cancer was taken into account.

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.

replies(9): >>45305484 #>>45305812 #>>45305947 #>>45305992 #>>45306290 #>>45306357 #>>45306904 #>>45309708 #>>45309711 #
TZubiri ◴[] No.45305947[source]
Sun good

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

replies(3): >>45306217 #>>45307605 #>>45308555 #
1. bobthepanda ◴[] No.45306217[source]
Two things can be true.

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.

replies(1): >>45308565 #
2. namuol ◴[] No.45308565[source]
Thank you, this is a much better comment than my original one, but this was exactly my point. Go outside more. Sunscreen probably isn’t killing you.