Avoid Swedish researchers sun can have serious consequences

Protection against skin cancer: Avoiding sunbathing could be dangerous
Skin cancer is one of the most common cancers in Germany. To reduce the risk of skin cancer, health experts advise against exposure to excessive sunlight. As Swedish researchers now report, it could be dangerous if you do without sunbathing.

Behavioral rule to protect against skin cancer
According to the German Cancer Society, up to 200,000 people are diagnosed with skin cancer each year. The German Cancer Aid expects an even higher number of 234,000 new cases. Skin cancer is one of the most common cancers. Health experts usually advise against protecting themselves from the sun. This contributes to a reduction of the personal cancer risk. Even in adulthood, it is advised not to expose yourself to excessive sunlight. But the renunciation of sun can also be associated with health problems and be "as dangerous as smoking". This is the conclusion of a study from Sweden.

Intense sunlight increases the risk of skin cancer. However, those who completely abstain from sunbathing endanger their health. (Image: Jürgen Fälchle / fotolia.com)

Avoiding sunbathing could be dangerous
The fact that sunbathing increases the risk of skin cancer is not called into question by scientists at the Karolinska Institute near Stockholm. Nevertheless, a long-term study by the medical university showed that it could be dangerous to leave the sunbathing altogether. Researchers wrote: "Avoiding the sun raises the risk of death to the same extent as smoking." The results of the study were recently published in the journal "Journal of Internal Medicine".

Women who often sunbathe lived longer
The study involved some 30,000 Swedish women between the ages of 25 and 64 years. Subjects should state how often they sun themselves in the summer, whether they sat in the winter on distant beaches or on ski slopes in the sun, whether they used tanning beds. 20 years later it was analyzed how many of the women had died. It turned out that the group of women who avoided the sun had the highest mortality. Accordingly, these women died up to two years earlier than those who sunbathed as often as possible.

Benefits of Vitamin D.
The risk of dying from cardiovascular disease declined as the women sunned. This also applied to all other causes of death - cancer excluded. According to the researchers, this was because the women who sunbathed more often lived longer and the cancer risk increases with age. The scientists pointed out studies on the benefits of vitamin D, which the body can only form when the sun hits unprotected skin. A vitamin D deficiency increases the risk of death, as previous studies showed. Although women who sunned a lot, according to the current study, a little more often malignant skin cancer, but even with them, this diagnosis was very rare.

Researchers make no recommendations
In summary, study author Dr. Pelle Lindqvist told the journal Medscape Medical News: "We know that there are three major lifestyle factors in our population [that endanger our health]: smoking, overweight and inactivity". And further: "Now we know there is a fourth - the avoidance of solar radiation". However, the scientists also pointed out that they had only made statistical observations. Dr. Lindqvist also said that it was also of the skin type pending, if and how long you should be exposed to the sun. (Ad)