Always wear sunscreen, as the sonorous tones of Australia’s most famous director and unlikely pop star Baz Luhrmann urged in 90s bop Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen). He also urged us to keep love letters and bin bank statements, yet we somehow managed to confuse the two and have ten years of Barclays comms stored in dusty boxes, but that’s not relevant here.
Australia has long stressed caution when it comes to fun in the sun, spending $2bn per year treating skin cancers in their population. Their ‘slip slop slap’ motto – slip on a T-shirt, slop on some sunscreen, slap on a hat – has been the subject of countless public health campaigns. But a new paper by researchers at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Association has updated this message to take account of different skin types, with current advice highlighting the importance of some vitamin D exposure, particularly for people with darker skin, who don't absorb it at the same rate as their lighter-skinned counterparts.
Why most of us need some D in our lives
Vitamin D is vital for calcium absorption to keep our bones healthy, and for our immune and nervous systems to function effectively. The body generates vitamin D from skin exposure to ultraviolet (UV) B rays from the sun (feeding us like plants!), with darker-skinned people generally needing more exposure for the same amount of absorption.
There’s also evidence that UV promotes mental wellbeing and happiness, which explains why that fiery ball in the sky feels so darn good when it touches the face after a long abstinence, but relaxing into the feeling is not easy after a lifetime of slapping it on. And what you slap on can be worrying too – in much the same way as Love Bites Only is very different to chemical insect repellent formulations, most high street sunscreens are full of dubious ingredients, of the kind you feel weird covering your child with – one friend used to refer to it as ‘toxic death cream’, which says it all.
So can we go back to slathering ourselves in olive oil in the midday heat? No, because the lighter your skin, the more cautious you need to be in the sun (duh), but on a sliding scale, most people need some UV for wellbeing as well as to mine Vit D. It’s a bit complicated, much like the abortive government tier system during Covid, so we’ve broken it down below.
How it works now
If you’re fair-skinned and burn easily, there’s no getting away from the slip slop slap, and this includes those with a history of skin cancer in their families or selves. This high-risk group - regardless of skin tone - includes the immunosuppressed, and people with a lot of, large, or atypical moles. You’re basically Tier 3, and need to stay indoors or cover up/wear the highest factor protection (and think about taking a regular vitamin D supplement).
Next up is the intermediate group (Tier 2, if you will), which translates as those with darker white, olive, or light brown skin. You guys can spend some time outdoors to maintain your vitamin D levels and get the benefits of sun time. But how long you should spend varies according to climate, time of day/year and how much skin is exposed, which is where it gets confusing, but common sense (that dying art) can be useful here.
Then there’s the low-risk group, Tier 1 – you can sit outside the pub, laughing with your friends, because you’re high-risk for vitamin D deficiency and don’t need routine sun protection. But if you’re in it for extended periods, then you’ll still want your sunscreen. Simples!
So don’t give up the sunscreen, but do find your tribe and act accordingly. Swerve the worst of the toxic death cream in favour of the most organic/dodgy chemical-free sunscreen you can find (it's a minefield, so do your research). And remember that whatever tier you’re in, insects don’t discriminate, so you’ll still need your Love Bites Only to make sure the little critters don’t take a chunk out of your vitamin D-pumped self. Be careful, read and heed the advice, but enjoy the sunshine if you can, because apparently everybody loves it - though that's a different song.
LBO x