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by otikik 2 days ago
My country, Spain, is famous for its beaches. Everyone native leaves the beach in the middle of the day and returns after lunch/siesta, when the rays are less intense.

Tourists stay and get burn to a crisp

1 comments

Cool anecdote but as I said, in the middle of the day you should go for a shorter amount of time (starting with just a few minutes) to get ideal UVB exposure.

Tourists are an especially bad example since they often work indoors all year or come from less sunny countries, so the sudden sun exposure is doubly bad for them.

Spain is sunnier yet has lower melanoma incidence than Northern Europe..almost like moderate sun exposure is protective, or that going from a cloudy country to a sunny area for a few weeks is especially bad - you can analyze it how you wish.

Or like the people living there for generations have slightly darker skin which protects better against the sun..
For sure that contributes to their higher ceiling for exposure, and also makes it harder for them to get vitamin D, which is why they shouldn't avoid going to the beach until the sun is down, since as a population they are quite deficient in Vitamin D.