Balancing sun safety and vitamin D for your skin type

Australian Community Media

New sun safety advice aims to help Australians find the right balance between sun exposure risk and getting enough vitamin D depending on your skin type. Researchers at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute explain the harms and benefits of time in the sun.

Transcript

00:00 [Music]

00:06 We have more evidence now about the potential benefits of sun exposure, and we also have

00:11 got more modelling about how much time is needed outdoors to maintain vitamin D.

00:17 [Music]

00:24 So the guidelines put people into three broad groups. People with very deeply pigmented

00:30 skin are at actually very low risk of getting skin cancer caused by exposure to the sun,

00:37 but they're at higher risk of vitamin D deficiency. So our advice for them is to actually try

00:41 and spend a bit of time outdoors to get the benefits of sunshine, both vitamin D and some

00:47 of the benefits for mood and potentially cardiovascular disease, etc.

00:52 Then we have a group of people who are at very high risk of skin cancer because they

00:57 have very sun sensitive skin. It's best that they avoid exposing their skin to the sun,

01:03 so they're fully covered when they're outdoors at times when there's enough ultraviolet radiation

01:09 to make vitamin D. If they do that, they may need to talk to their doctor about how they

01:15 meet their vitamin D requirements.

01:19 Then there's a group of people who sit in the middle, for whom sun protection remains

01:22 very important, but who can probably safely spend enough time outdoors to maintain vitamin

01:30 D and while doing so get some of the other benefits of sun exposure.

01:35 The previous guidelines really didn't explicitly recognise the diversity in Australia's population

01:43 and the ways in which that influences that difference in the balance.

01:49 For vitamin D production, the best approach is to expose as much skin as possible for

01:56 as short a time as possible. What I would say though, is that all people, except for

02:02 those with deeply pigmented skin, should be putting on sunscreen as part of their normal

02:08 morning routine, just as routine is brushing your teeth, whenever the UV index is forecast

02:14 to get to three or more. For most of Australia, that's most of the year.

02:18 [Music]

02:22 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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