[pen2l]

The most important thing one can do to avoid looking old is to avoid the sun. Sun makes skin wrinkly: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trucker-accumulates-skin-damage.... Folks today generally spend less time in the sun than they did a few decades ago. The smoking also probably played a part in people making look old long ago.

I wonder whether the more physical lifestyles (farming, more manual labor, more physical housework) increasing testosterone levels played a part too in making folks look older/bigger.

[mensetmanusman]

Lack of enough sun exposure is also a major health concern. We may look younger but we are far more obese.

[kaesar14]

This comment didn't deserve all these downvotes, the majority of human beings on the planet likely do not need sunscreen and benefit from more sun exposure.

[throw827474737]

As if it is only black or white... if you get sunburn its definitely worse than the benefits from sunexposure, and Vitamin D also builds fine without sunburning exposure times and with sunscreen, and then it is also about when/which sun..

Anyway, downvotes most likely were for how strangely arguments were lined up by GP..

1. there is a large healthy range between unhealthy lack of enough sun and unhealthy sun exposure (and you can shift that with sunscreen).

2. Lack of sun has not much to do with obesity.

Saying between the lines that suncreen is unhealthy and makes you fat.. yeah I know he didn't say, but..

[kaesar14]

https://www.outsideonline.com/health/wellness/sunscreen-sun-...

I think based on the studies linked in the source above quite a lot of what you've stated as plain fact is easily debatable.

1. Does not seem like Vitamin D supplementation provides any of the benefits that are linked to Vitamin D from sun exposure.

2. The maladies strongly linked to being combatted by said Vitamin D kill far, far more Americans (700,000) than melanoma (7,000) a year.

3. Obesity and vitamin D have a pretty strong experimental link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5691711/

[mensetmanusman]

Sorry, meant to post the connections people are researching between vitamin-D deficiency and obesity:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5691711/

[eurasiantiger]

Surprise: normal-weight people spend time sunbathing, while obese people do not.

This is a great example of why correlation does not imply causation.

[mensetmanusman]

Note that there are few ethical ways to prove single variable causation over long times in human studies :)

[arbol]

You probably don't need sun cream: https://www.outsideonline.com/health/wellness/sunscreen-sun-...

[tintedfireglass]

Yeah, nothing happened to humans without sunscreen in the past 299900 years, what will it do now?

[bluefirebrand]

Are some people less likely to develop skin cancer?

Because no thanks on that. I'll keep wearing the sunscreen.

[e9]

Sunscreens are a recent development in human history. Yes we do have worse ozone layer and more UV gets to us but we also eat like shit. Antioxidants are the original sunscreen and protector from sunburns and skin cancer. If you don't have sunscreen or allergic to it then make sure you consume antioxidants in form of fruits/vegetables/supplements and hydrate with water regularly when you go out.

[bluefirebrand]

Also people used to just die of skin cancer and they called it "boils" or "witchcraft" or something.

Let's not pretend it never existed just because people historically didn't know what it was or how to document it.

[kaesar14]

Yes, anyone with non-white skin.

[ericbarrett]

People are a lot better about sunscreen too (and it's a lot more available). As a kid in the 80s we'd run around without even a thought to sun exposure, or go to the pool for hours, and come back red as lobsters; nobody thought anything of it.

[aidenn0]

Clearly my mom was in tune to updated health advice. We had to wear sunscreen and seatbelts in the 80s and weren't allowed to play football (due to head-injury concerns) in the 90s. If it were just fad following, I assume there would be things that people think are silly now that we were forced to do for safety, but nothing's coming to mind...