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Comment by sophacles | Hacker News Reader

Have you considered going to a tanning bed? I have heard this works very well, improving mood and general outlook during the dark times. I plan on doing this 1-2 times a week when the winter gets going hardcore here as an experiment.

In reading up on this subject, just a few minutes is all that is needed, the point is not a tan, just exposure to UV and brightness.

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No I have not considered using a solarium tanning bed, nor a bright "sunlight" lamp. Various studies have associated solarium tanning with increased skin cancer risk and bright lamps with damage in the eye cells that sense light. Then there is the bright-light-in-your-ears hoax (funded by ex-nokia execs and powered by questionable "scientific" evidence).

I don't think that these miracle cures for darkness have an overall positive effect. One study may show that they help with the symptoms of limited sunlight exposure but other studies show that they cause harm as well. These cures seem to attack the problem by fixing one aspect of the problem, usually by bombing you with photons in the visible light spectrum. I don't believe there is a replacement for full-spectrum sunlight.

I don't know if it's related, but my domestic cats live largely in a light cycle dominated by my daily business, which is not related to time of year changes in any way. Yet they shed their fur every fall and every spring. I think the amount and period of daily sunlight through the small windows of my appartment is the key factor inducing these changes in the animals (and even more so with my indoor plants).

I prefer getting my daily intake of photons the good old nuclear fusion way.

Of course I explicitly stated that tanning is not the point. I explicitly suggested less exposure than that point. To my knowledge there have been no studies on the effects of limited exposure like this that suggest they cause cancer any more than normal (not burning/tanning level) exposure to the sun.

Nor is it a miracle cure, from my understanding it isn't even a cure, just a symptom reducer, because you know, proper levels of vitamin D that are actually activated are not achievable via supplement. It actually takes UV to do that.

Let's see how your mood is when diagnosed with skin cancer! Not that I would wish it in anyone, but intentional exposure to damaging UV when there are safer alternative treatments for SAD does not seem like a sensible course of action.

Are you aware that Vitamin D supplements don't actually give you proper levels of activated Vitamin D? It turns out there is a balance of too much UV and too little UV. If you go to a tanning bed for a few minutes a couple times a week, you aren't doing damage, but are activating Vitamin D. It isn't even enough to have a tan.

I know it is tricky, but there are situations where there is no such thing as 0 risk, you have to optimize for minimal. Making 0 risk of one thing frequently increases risk for others. In this case, improper active vitamin D levels increase risk for lots of ailments, far more than a few minutes of UV exposure does for skin cancer.

A few minutes exposure to UV isn't harmful, and is on balance likely benficial.

Put it this way - I would get more UV collecting my mail in summer than you would on a tanning bed for a couple of minutes. And I haven't dropped dead. But a bright sunny day does make my mood brighter.

Vitamin D deficiency and depression are much bigger issues than UV over exposure.

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