My advice is to get regular enough sun exposure that you’re not at risk for sunburn.
I only use sunscreen about once a year for unusual exposures.
One downside is that when I stopped using sunscreen, I got more tick bites. I don’t think I got more ticks on me. Most likely what changed is they became faster at finding a place to bite.
My advice is to get regular enough sun exposure that you’re not at risk for sunburn.
Are you sure this is the correct thing to do, though?
I believed this myself for a long time and this seems to be the common wisdom: Get a natural tan → you will get fewer sunburns → therefore you are less at risk of cancer So what I thought was that it is better to have tanned skin than pale skin (if your skin is naturally pale) and I should purposefully tan my skin to ‘strengthen’ it.
However, recently I have read things that seems to suggest that this is actually not true. Unfortunately I haven’t found great sources for this, but also nothing to the contrary. If you look at point number 3 here, it suggests what I mean.
If I understand that correctly, the argument is as follows: - Every time your skin changes color you are already doing damage to your skin - Yes, your skin gets more resistant to sunburns, however in order to regularly keep your skin tanned, the aggregated damage to your skin still puts you at higher risk of skin cancer and other problems
So the course of action would be - Get enough sun for Vitamin D production (but this seems to be possible without tanning) - Don’t let your skin get to the point of getting tanned by using sunscreen - Of course, don’t get sunburnt
Most skin cancer information sites seem to support this interpretation (example), however I feel like a lot of people still seem to think tanned skin is healthy, at least I used to.
My advice is to get regular enough sun exposure that you’re not at risk for sunburn.
I only use sunscreen about once a year for unusual exposures.
One downside is that when I stopped using sunscreen, I got more tick bites. I don’t think I got more ticks on me. Most likely what changed is they became faster at finding a place to bite.
Are you sure this is the correct thing to do, though?
I believed this myself for a long time and this seems to be the common wisdom:
Get a natural tan → you will get fewer sunburns → therefore you are less at risk of cancer
So what I thought was that it is better to have tanned skin than pale skin (if your skin is naturally pale) and I should purposefully tan my skin to ‘strengthen’ it.
However, recently I have read things that seems to suggest that this is actually not true. Unfortunately I haven’t found great sources for this, but also nothing to the contrary. If you look at point number 3 here, it suggests what I mean.
If I understand that correctly, the argument is as follows:
- Every time your skin changes color you are already doing damage to your skin
- Yes, your skin gets more resistant to sunburns, however in order to regularly keep your skin tanned, the aggregated damage to your skin still puts you at higher risk of skin cancer and other problems
So the course of action would be
- Get enough sun for Vitamin D production (but this seems to be possible without tanning)
- Don’t let your skin get to the point of getting tanned by using sunscreen
- Of course, don’t get sunburnt
Most skin cancer information sites seem to support this interpretation (example), however I feel like a lot of people still seem to think tanned skin is healthy, at least I used to.