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A touch of sun: Good or bad?
Can getting a little bit of sun be good for you after all? Find out here!
By Marilisa Racco
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The sun has become a villain of comic book proportions, causing skin cancer and premature aging. In fact, the last time anyone said "I'm working on my tan," her next sentence was likely "And then I'm getting a body perm." But recent studies show that vitamin D, which we get from sun exposure, offers real health benefits, and it has slightly softened our stance against sun worship.
Take breast cancer, for example. A recent study by Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston found that a combination of vitamin D and calcium could lower the risk of breast cancer in premenopausal women by 40 percent. Another study, conducted at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., last year, showed that post-menopausal women who took a combination of vitamin D and calcium supplements had a 60 percent lower risk of breast, lung and colon cancers. And that's not all: "Evidence shows that vitamin D is also important for the prevention of multiple sclerosis, osteoporosis, diabetes and cardiovascular disease," says Dr. Edward Giovannucci, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.
"Vitamin D is essential for us," says Dr. Richard Thomas, a dermatologist at Vancouver's Face & Skin Clinic and clinical assistant professor of dermatology at The University of British Columbia in Vancouver. But don't dash to the beach yet. There are two ways to get vitamin D: from the sun and from your diet.
In the summer, to get enough vitamin D from the sun, all you need to do is "stick your arm out the window for 10 to 15 minutes twice a week," says Thomas. (A dark-skinned person requires 20 to 30 minutes because the melanin in her skin acts as a natural sunscreen against UVB rays.)
Click here to read more.
Read more:
Be a bronzed beauty this summer ... sans sun!
Celebrate summer
Make the most of the skin you're in!
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