By Marc Sorenson, EdD. Sunlight Institute
Although I occasionally try to balance the messages about tanning beds, this blog is meant neither to discourage nor promote their use. The readers should make up their minds after weighing the evidence. In a recent blog, I mentioned some positive messages about tanning-bed use, which included the following:[1] Note: all references for the following list are found in the blog under footnote 1.
- Tanning-bed use is associated with a reduced risk of clots.
- Tanning-bed use is associated with increased vitamin D levels.
- Tanning-bed use is associated with stronger bones
- Tanning-bed use can cure psoriasis and eczema and tanning beds are often recommended by dermatologists.
- Tanning-bed use more than three times yearly is associated with a 40-50% reduced risk of endometrial cancer.
- Tanning-bed use is associated to lower breast-cancer risk.
After I posted the above information, a friend from Canada reminded me of research by Dr. Pelle Lindqvist and his colleagues, which demonstrated that both sun exposure and tanning-bed exposure reduced the risk of death during a 20-year study.[2] Women who used tanning beds were 23% less likely to die of any cause than women who did not use them.
In addition, I remembered an older study that showed that tanning beds were able to take winter vitamin D levels up to summer levels in a period of five weeks.[3]
So, along with the bad rap tanning beds are receiving, there is some good news. Who wouldn’t want to live longer in better health? Still, as with all decisions, weigh the evidence and then decide.
[1] http://sunlightinstitute.org/defending-the-sun-from-the-lies-damn-lies-duplicity-deception-death-and-disease-of-the-anti-sun-business-part-3/
[2] Lindqvist P. Epstein E, Landin-Olsson M, Ingvar C, Nielsen K, Stenbeck M, Olsson H. Avoidance of sun exposure is a risk factor for all-cause mortality: Results from the Melanoma in Southern Sweden cohort
[3] Moan J, Lagunova Z, Cicarma E, Aksnes L, Dahlback A, Grant WB, Porojnicu AC. Sunbeds as vitamin D sources. Photochem Photobiol. 2009 Nov-Dec;85(6):1474-9.
By Marc Sorenson, EdD. Sunlight Institute
One of the more interesting research papers in recent memory demonstrates that the amount of sunlight during the month of birth may increase the life span of adult diabetics.[1] The researchers studied the death records of 829,000 diabetics, 90% of whom were type 2. Among the most interesting findings was that with rapidly decreasing ultraviolet radiation (UVR or sunlight) at the time of birth, lifespan decreased in better nourished, white female diabetic population.
Diabetic males, on the other hand, gained 6.1 years of life when exposure to sunlight was increasing at birth month, whereas females gained 2.3 years.
This all makes perfect sense, since fall weather is a time of rapidly decreasing sunlight intensity and a drop in temperature, which would decrease vitamin D and other photoproducts, and cause people to be outdoors less.
The researchers concluded that “Rapidly changing UVR at the equinoxes modulates the expression of an epigenome involving the conservation of energy, a mechanism especially canalized in women. Decreasing UVR at conception and early gestation stimulates energy conservation in persons we consider ‘diabetic’ in today’s environment of caloric surfeit. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries ethnic minorities had poorer nutrition, laborious work, and leaner bodies, and in that environment a calorie-conserving epigenome was a survival advantage. Ethnic minorities with a similar epigenome lived long enough to express diabetes as we define it today and exceeded the lifespan of their nondiabetic contemporaries, while that epigenome in diabetics in the nutritional environment of today is detrimental to lifespan.”
So as I see it, those who are programmed genetically for diabetes can increase lifespan by being born at the right time of year. If only their parents had known!
[1] George E Davis Jr* and Walter E Lowell. Variation in ultraviolet radiation and diabetes: evidence of an epigenetic effect that modulates diabetics’ lifespan. Clinical Epigenetics 2013, 5:5.