The Health Benefits of the Sun

One of the big curiosities with modern life is the cancer rates. While cancer was not unknown during the early centuries of Western Civilization, it was also, I gather, far from the prevalent cause of death that it is in the modern era. What changed? Is the difference just due to pollution and the increase in chemicals? Perhaps it is not.

Researchers in the United Kingdom have found that the sun might have a non-trivial role to play in preventing cancer.^[1] This does not come as a total surprise, not too long ago^[2], I learned from an ABC news report^[3] that the sun not only causes skin cancer, but also plays a role in preventing it. Now that result is extended to show that the vitamin D, produced by the body in response to sunlight, is necessary to prevent breast, colon, prostate and ovary cancers, producing a 50% decrease if absorbed at approximately twice the levels recommended by the health guidelines here in the United States.

As I stated previously, this development in modern medical understanding is not truly surprising, but rather flows from both the evolutionary and design understandings of how we came to be. Either way, it follows that we would be adapted to the high exposure levels of the lifestyles common up to the industrial revolution. So just as our environment became more toxic, we started to live in a radically different way as well, spending far more time indoors. Just what the doctor would have ordered, right?