Sun, Sand & Skin Health
The sun really can harm you, unfortunately.
A couple of years ago, I was on placement in Neurosurgery. One of the gentlemen undergoing brain surgery was a young man who had melanoma. Melanoma is a type of skin cancer of the melanocytes, and it can metastasise (spreading beyond the initial cancer location) to the brain. And, in this case, it had done just that.
This experience gave me a bit of a shock. Of course, it's just an anecdote and does not say anything about the risk of this occurrence, but these anecdotes often stick with us, for better or worse. In my case, it reminded me that skin health is
something I had not paid much attention to, and my attitude to sun damage was mostly "ah, it'll be grand, sure I'm healthy".
In reality, the sun can be harmful. That doesn't mean it's without benefits. Even the simple mood-boosting
properties can be quite potent for many people, and these benefits extend elsewhere too, but in this article, I want to focus on the harms, as this is an often-neglected area in the health and fitness space.
The relationship between sun
exposure and skin damage is one of the most well-established phenomena in dermatology. Sunlight consists of various types of radiation, including ultraviolet (UV) radiation. There are three categories of UV radiation: UVA, UVB, and UVC.
