Anecdotal Evidence and Skin Cancer

[ginkgo]

I know that the following is anecdotal evidence so it does not prove anything at all. But it is an exteme case. Also the people that say that sunlight causes skin cancer say that there is no correlaton in studies between adults sunbathing and skin cancer. Only with children. Note that I am white.

At a young age (before age 5) my grandfather would take the family to live at a hotel on Atlantic City beach for the entire summer. Before age 5 I slipped away from an inner tube in the pool and almost drowned. So I was taught to swim at age 5. Everyday (except rain) we went to the beach before anyone else, like 6 AM.

Then we stayed on the beach the entire morning, not in the shade except for eating breakfast in a restaurant. Then after lunch we spent the entire afternoon, never in the shade, at the pool overlooking the beach. This continued until I was 16.

Now I am no longer young, but have never had skin cancer or any cancer. Studies have shown that lifeguards in Australia have low rates of skin cancer. Also studies in England show that people with the highest rates of skin cancer are in an office all day and are never out in bright sunlight. The bad thing about sunlight is that it is free and not so good for the economy.

[bluestar]

(almost) like you I spent most of my life outside. I am white too. I don't like being TOO hot so usually seek a bit of shade when I start to feel overheated generally, but otherwise have been at the mercy of the elements, winter and summer most of my life.
I had a job for 7 years where I was in total baking hot sunshine for hours in a day, then another job doing work on a lady's garden....the same.
Fingers crossed....but I have never developed skin cancer, or even any suspicious moles etc, and am not very wrinkled either.
The benefits of sunshine are tremendous. I sunbathe in winter. You know those cold snowy or frosty days (well we have them where I live) -and it's blue skies and bright sun...I get my upper body washed by the sun up to the point where I start to feel too cold. I KNOW it is doing me good!

One small point though. A few years ago I started getting little spotty things on my upper arms occasionally during really hot weather. Nothing seemed to make them go away. I started using factor 30 suncream and lo and behold, the spot-things disappeared! If I don't use it, they come back, so that's some small evidence to me that the cream is worth using.

[alexjones]

Phew! God save us!

[shawnmihalik]

I'm totally with you on this, ginko. We need to stop fearing the sun and putting poisonous chemicals on our skin.

[ginkgo]

Originally Posted by bluestar

(almost) like you I spent most of my life outside. I am white too. I don't like being
One small point though. A few years ago I started getting little spotty things on my upper arms occasionally during really hot weather. Nothing seemed to make them go away. I started using factor 30 suncream and lo and behold, the spot-things disappeared! If I don't use it, they come back, so that's some small evidence to me that the cream is worth using.

As far as spotty things. Here is the theory. A woman had a problem with her knee so an herbalist, Sharon, rubbed on Bone, Flesh and Catiledge herbal formula by Dr Chistopher. Later the woman called and said that her knee got burned. Now the herbal formula did not burn her knee. But her knee would not have gotten burned if she did not have it rubbed on.

Sharon said that she must have gotten cortisone injections. See the herbal formula withdraws toxins from the knee. So it withdrew the cortisone from inside her knee and the cortisone burned her knee. What does this have to do with you?

Sunbathing withdraws cancer from inside the body to the skin, like with you. Then more sunbathing heals the cancer on the skin. Sunlight did not cause it but did move it. I also had some mutated growths on my skin, but still kept sunbathing and now they are gone.

[burningbright]

You are very unlikely to die of skin cancer to start with. The probability of dying of skin cancer is very low only 0.12%. Getting sun does not cause skin cancer, it increases the likelihood of getting skin cancer, it is a pretty important distinction. Even if your behaviour caused the likelihood of cancer to increase by a 100% that would still only put you likely to die of it at 0.24%, so really you not getting skin cancer does not say much of anything.

The Australian life guards having a lower skin cancer risk does not surprise me, as they probably apply sun block effectively as they have to be out in the sun all day while most people tend to not apply it correctly.

Again not surprised about office workers having the highest skin cancer rates in the England, in England we get a few weeks of strong sun during the year, so what ends up happening is that these office workers go to the park and stay there too long and end up getting sunburned.