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Comment by ianai | Hacker News Reader

Light skinned people shouldn’t get their vitamin d from the sun. The skin cancer risk far outweighs any benefit.

If it becomes scarce look up how to make vitamin d with mushrooms left in the sun.

This is nonsense. 10-30 mins of sunlight a day without sunscreen for caucasians is something on the order of 10,000 IU of Vitamin D. You can do this safely without the worry of skin cancer.

Tell it to every derm I’ve talked to or read.

It might be good to exercise a bit of common sense before believing everything a doctor tells you.

How likely is it that getting even small amounts of sunlight is horribly dangerous? Do you believe in evolution? (For that matter, if you instead believe in creation by a benevolent god, you get the same answer.)

That's not even wrong when you haven't specified anglenpf sun (latitude or time of day.)

Clothed? Naked? In shorts?

It is hard to reconcile the fact that it's so easy to get enough D from sun in a short time with the fact that deficiency levels are roughly 40% in the US, with insufficiency (20-30ng/ml) much, much higher than 40% (and also high is much of the rest of the world). Look at the world chart in the paper (copied from Palacios et al review): 73% insufficiency in Austrelia, 61% in Britain even in summer, etc.).

This is an old wives’ tale. Most recent research indicates that moderate sun exposure without sunscreen (and without burning) is protective against many forms of cancer, including melanoma.

Furthermore, oral vitamin D supplementation is not proven to have the same benefits as endogenous D production, possibly indicating that the sun/skin interaction is doing something a little more complex than we currently understand.

I still supplement, of course. We’re all allowed a bit of magical thinking.

You know white people aren't nocturnal vampires hiding behind parasols during the day, right?

Speak for yourself. My dermatologist won't let me out in the sun or the full moon (the latter because I might turn into a werewolf).

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