The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Are there any sane/"heterodox" dermatologists out there with science on how to tan safely, quickly, and effectively? It seems like the "science" end of things is always "avoid the sun in all cases, wear the Maximum SPF available and reapply it every half hour." And the other end of it is women who go to tanning salons or the guy on the beach trip who claims that he always tans in the summer, breaks out in blisters on day one, and scares away women.
Common sense lived experience, it does seem like getting sunburned is bad, and I doubt it's good for me to repeatedly get sunburned severely. At the same time, the idea forwarded that all tanning is just sun damage and will inevitably lead to cancer seems ridiculous, it seems like in years when I'm outside a lot over time I develop a nice tan, that also acts to protect me from severe sunburn. And realistically, if one does things outside, one is never going to consistently apply sunscreen for the entire April - September period. I'll always forget, or wear something odd at a weird angle, or whatever.
So who has the real dope on this one? What's the method to achieve a tan without burning?
the problem is with intermittent intense exposure that your skin has not built up protection against because it has not been trained on gradually increasing doses of radiation from throughout the year, if you gradually increase the intensity by spending time in the outdoors during the midday hours every day starting from early spring, you will develop a protective tan that will prevent excessive damage in the summer midday sunlight that causes sunburns in people who spend most of their life indoors.
More options
Context Copy link
I used to work outside a lot, and am white as can be -- it's pretty simple really, wear some SPF15 or so for a few days until you start to get dark, then don't worry about it anymore.
Not a dermatologist, but not a wrinkly prune and nor do I have skin cancer -- and I did this every year pretty much of my twenties. YMMV.
(For the record the really strong evidence linking sun exposure and melanoma for the longest time was a study indicating a correlation between childhood sunburns and eventual cancer -- so it may not be even be real. I like the vitamin D, plus it feels good, man)
the strongest correlating factor for getting melanoma is number of moles, most of which arise during childhood from sun damage events, and actually fadeaway with continued sun exposure throughout one's lifetime. sustained and regular sun exposure is protective against melanoma, this is why melanoma rates have risen drastically over the past 100 years and are continuing to rise as people started spending less time outdoors, and are higher in indoor workers than they are in outdoor workers.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link