Experts have overturned decades of advice by urging people to go out in the midday sun without sunblock – because the dangers of missing out on Vitamin D can outweigh the risk of cancer.
Richard Alleyne
Telegraph
After years of ordering us to cover up to avoid skin cancer, a leading group of charities are now telling us to go out in the midday sun unprotected – at least for the first few minutes.
The change of heart comes as it emerges a large proportion of Britons are at risk from vitamin D deficiency which can lead to a host of health problems.
Paranoia about sun exposure has become so great among some parents that doctors are even seeing a return of rickets in children – the bone disease that it was thought died out 80 years ago.
The “definitive statement” by seven leading health groups and charities, including Cancer Research UK, the National Osteoporosis Society and Multiple Sclerosis Society, is designed to clarify conflicting messages.
It concluded that surrendering your body to the sun for 10 minutes should take place at midday during the summer months because that is when the sun is strong enough to trigger the body into making vitamin D.
For the whole of winter, and before 10am and after 4pm in summer, the rays are too weak in the UK, to stimulate vitamin D synthesis in the skin.
But they reiterated the message that people should “never be red” at the end of the day and that foreign sun was much stronger.
After 10 it is time to go indoors, cover up or slap on the sunscreen, they said.
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