Dr. Richard Weller, who introduced us to UV light’s health benefit from nitric oxide production in 2013, wrote a paper earlier this year promoting the importance of sun exposure for older people, as summarized by Dr. Marc Sorenson for the Sunlight Institute.

Sorenson breaks down the points from the paper as follows:

1. “Intermittent sun exposure is a risk factor for the more dangerous melanoma but chronic sun exposure and outdoor occupation may be protective.”
2. “Public health advice has tended to concentrate on the dangers of sun exposure despite the absence of any data that increased sun exposure correlates with raised all-cause mortality.”
3. “Inadequate sun exposure carries its own risks, and the older population are particularly sun deprived as recorded by low serum Vitamin D levels and lack of outdoor activity.”
4. “Sunlight has health benefits dependently and independently of vitamin D synthesis. Low serum vitamin D levels correlate with increased morbidity and mortality but the direction of association is not always clear. Vitamin D has a causal role in calcium and phosphate metabolism, in skeletal health and probably reduction of colorectal cancer.”
5. “…..mobilization of nitric oxide by UVA radiation from nitrate stores in skin, with consequent reduction in BP, may account for the observed reduction in cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality with increased sun exposure.”
6. “Advice on healthy sun exposure needs to be reconsidered, with reduction in all-cause mortality and morbidity as the primary end point.”

Click here to read Sorenson’s entire blog post about Weller’s paper

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