Wow, it feels like nobody read the article. Findings:

- high blood pressure leads to a lot of deaths

- people that spend more time in the sun have lower blood pressure

- skin cancer is caused by sun exposure, but it kills far, far less people than high blood pressure

- people that spend more time in the sun have a lower rate of dying from skin cancer than people who spend less time in the sun!

Summary: more sun exposure makes you less likely to die on at least two fronts!

It's really very simple. You skin adapts to sunlight and doesn't burn if you increase your exposure gradually, and then you get some amazing benefits from it!

Correction. More sun exposure is CORRELATED with being less likely do die. I don't think there's a single causal connection in this article.

Or active people spend more time outside and have a lower rate of heart disease, regardless of whether the sun is shining.

I did[1], and would be curious if anyone is familiar with the underlying study. How did they attempt to control for other factors? (I assume that they did, and am interested to know how)

Also do you have to get a sunburn for sun damage to increase the risk of skin cancers? My understanding was accumulated sun exposure was the issue.

[1] Lindqvist tracked the sunbathing habits of nearly 30,000 women in Sweden over 20 years. Originally, he was studying blood clots, which he found occurred less frequently in women who spent more time in the sun—and less frequently during the summer... decided to look at overall mortality rates, and the results were shocking. Over the 20 years of the study, sun avoiders were twice as likely to die as sun worshippers.

What I got from this is if we mandate the hospitals open their rooms to the sun, the new correlation will cause people to avoid the sunlight because "it leads to more deaths"

I guess all the grandmas on the beach that look like they have a leather hide for a skin didn't get the memo that the sun doesn't cause damage after all.

In all seriousness: don't listen to OP, use sunscreen whenever possible.

That logic is extremely broken. People who spend more time outside do so because of more physical activity. The sun exposure is a side effect. Drawing the conclusion that sun exposure is therefore safe is just totally bonkers.

I read the article and it conjectures a bunch of stuff but fails to prove it or link relevant studies.

So consider then: we just did a round of "gloves are contaminating basically all micro plastics research" - it might be worthwhile to be slightly skeptical of a suspiciously anti-sunscreen adjacent narrative (coz "sunscreen might be bad for you" is in the article too).

And we should absolutely be suspicious of narratives which have the benefit of confirming someone should do what they already wanted to do: nobody likes putting on sunscreen.

And how strange the conclusion is mostly "you don't need sunscreen" versus "use a lower SPF".

Sigh.

Correlation != causation

It could be that people that spend more time in the sun are busy getting exercise. Which lowers blood pressure.

It could be that people that spend a lot of time in the sun know that they have skin damage, and are more likely to detect melanomas due to more frequent checks of their damaged skin.

Summary: More sun exposure may or may not lead to lower risk of death on two fronts. It seems far more likely that getting exercise and frequent melanoma checks lead to better outcomes, and both of those are correlated with being in the sun, but by no means necessary to the outcome.