Amie KeeleyIT is not just fun in the sun… it is good for your health as well.
The British medical establishment insists that living in the sun can help to ward off certain cancers.
While the dangers of sunburn are acknowledged by everyone – Mediterranean countries fare better than their northern counterparts as regards prostate, colon and breast cancer.
This is because vitamin D is thought to slow cell growth and spread around your body.
The good news for expats in Andalucia comes six years after doctors in Australia confessed they may have exaggerated the dangers of sunlight, and failed to promote its benefits.
Now they admit some tanning is good for you because sunlight is the best source of vitamin D.
Professor Bruce Armstrong, of Sydney University said: “It’s a revolution. I have been working in public health and preaching sun avoidance for 25 years. But this statement says there are two sides to the story.”
Harvard Medical School also supported the revelation with their own research showing that lung cancer patients doubled their five-year survival rate if operated on in summer.
And now the British medical establishment accepts it has perhaps been pushing anti-exposure guidelines too far.
A spokesman for Cancer Research UK said: “Little and frequent sun exposure is good.”
Interestingly, cases of rickets – a bone disease thought to have died out 80 years ago – appears to be growing among children.
It is brought about by a lack of vitamin D.
At last the medical community is backtracking on something we all know is right, a bit of sun is good for you. I am not surprised rickets disease has reappeared in the UK, when I used to live there I witnessed my paranoid, 30 something, neighbours smothering their children in suncream, covering them from head to foot in totally inappropriate clothing and hats on the very few occasions the weather was sunny and warm, how pathetic, instead of letting them run around in shorts etc. to enjoy the sun. Those of us who live in Southern Spain know it is far too hot after midday to venture into the sun during July and August and sensibly follow the siesta tradition with shutters firmly closed to conserve the delightful cool. It is only the sun starved Northern Europeans who lay roasting on the beaches during their “make the most of it” holidays, hence tempting fate. As with every pleasure in life, a little moderation is the order of the day but the sun surely makes us feel a lot better and hopefully now the medics will not frown upon us so much.