The benefits of sunlight outweigh the risks of skin cancer
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Several years ago I did a post on a study showing that, when it comes to overall health, avoiding sunlight was a bad as smoking a pack of cigarettes. Yes, there is a slightly higher risk of skin cancer with sun exposure but that risk is mostly limited to the relatively harmless basal cell carcinoma. That type of cancer almost always stays local, does not cause much visible damage and can easily be treated with excision or simply rubbing aspirin on the skin in the vicinity of the lesion. The deadly cancer, melanoma, almost always appears in places that never see sunlight and that type of cancer has not been linked to sunlight exposure. Now, it looks like mainstream media is starting to sing the same song, with the “esteemed” Economist magazine joining the chorus. It gives a little hope that not everything is a lost cause in medicine, since it was Economist that was one of the most vocal proponents over the last 20-30 years of wearing sunscreen and avoiding sunlight like the devil.