Why aren't all the tribes in Africa, Australia, New Zealand and South America all dead from skin cancer? They live in the sun. I'm Native American and my ancestors didn't have sunblock.

I can understand how doctors want to blame something for skin cancer, maybe some people have a trigger set off by sunlight, but it's obvious that humans have lived for centuries living with little to no protection. It's not just being out in the sun that developes the cancer. There has to be another factor.

I think mostly caucasians get skin cancer. African Americans & Native Americans have more pigment in their skin and therefore aren't affected by sunlight the same as lighter skin is. You rarely hear of someone with darker coloring getting skin cancer. Every ethnicity has their diseases or things they are more susceptible to or that are more prominent.

Damage to the ozone layer due to the use of CFC's and other ozone-depleting chemicals in industry is a fairly recent phenomenon. Thus, more UV is potentially reaching the surface of the earth now than 100 years ago.

And in olden days (pre 1800), with respect to European whites, even if it was 90 degrees outside and humid, modesty required you to wear long pants or skirt and a long shirt or blouse. No one wore shorts, or bikinis, or muscle shirts, or anything like that. You were covered head to toe, all the time. And if it was sunny, you wore a big brimmed hat. Thus, those with a Euro background show a lot more skin these days than in historic times.

Most clothing allows penetration of some UV rays.

But I don't think anyone is saying UV rays are the only cause of skin cancer.

Firstly, yes, Africans DO get skin-cancer. In fact, African Americans are the most likely to die of melanoma.

No, most people in Africa don't walk around all day in the buff. The reason is because even dark-skinned Africans get sun-burned too. Anyone staying out in the sun a lot wears clothing that covers, and even hoods.

People can get skin-cancer where there is no sun for several reasons. Firstly, skin cancer metastasizes like all other cancers -- see the article Dermatologic Manifestations of Metastatic Carcinoma of the Skin.

In some cases, the primary site is destroyed by the immune system, but the metastatic sites prosper. Regrettably, skin cancer often (in later metastases) leads to brain cancer -- so the first sign of the skin cancer may have been a change in personality or cognition.

Charls,

Basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas usually do form on the arms, face, hands, and neck (even under the hair, of the head). Then there is the superficial spreading melanoma, also related to sun-exposure (usually heavy) and occurs on womens legs, either gender's back and such.

No, most people in Africa don't walk around all day in the buff.

Hey, I saw 'The Gods Must Be Crazy'.

A better way to help with your psoriasis would be to take liquid cod liver oil supplements. I reccomend Carlso Laboratories brand. People forget that you need Vit A with Vit D, along with calcium, for everything to work right, and its primarily Vit A that premotes skin health.

Cod liver oil is today's snake oil.

Hilary, you've clearly never had 70% of your body covered in psoriasis. Once you have, you'd realize that a liquid cod liver oil supplement is worth nothing. Get back to me when you can speak from experience...

Psoriasis is autoimmune in nature. Cod liver oil does nothing to modify the immune system.

Heather, you are correct. All those "natural" oils, ointments, or lotions at best might sooth the discomfort for a short while. However, it does absolutely nothing to get it dormant. I've tried EVERYTHING! Trust me!

that's great that YOU benefit from tanning with your psoriasis...the real problem is the thousands, nay, millions of Jersey-shore wannabe teenagers who don't have psoriasis.

All I am saying is that I am definitely thankful that it is offered. Yes, Jersey Shore wanna be's are ridiculous and most likely, not very smart.

Blake - have you tried the injectable TNF-a modifiers?

I actually have not tried any injection based prescriptions. A while back, Enbrel was suppose to be the new latest and greatest for Psoriasis sufferers. However, the side affects are horrific on all of your organs and depletes your immune systems ability to fight off viruses. Many dermatologists that I have seen do not like prescribing this due to all the side affects. There have been deaths caused by Enbrel while using a controlled amount.

I have a friend who has always looked very young for her age. About a year ago, she stopped wearing face-makeup and started tanning. She is convinced that it cures her acne... but really it was the not wearing makeup. Anyway it's crazy. I've known this girl over 20 years and she's always been this ageless wonder... until the last year when she's aged like 10-15 years. How do people deal with the orangeness? I spend as much time in the sun as I can get and I've just had a gradual trajectory of aging, looking neither old (except when tired. Thanks, kids!) or young for my age. I don't always expose a maximum of skin working in the sun, but still a lot of cumulative exposure. I wonder if the amount of baseline melanin in an individual's skin (ie, skin color) serves as a mechanism to determine the range of UV exposure one's body can tolerate before there is massive cell damage.

I'm veeerrry fair and have had some nasty burns, but my brother is darker and is ALWAYS in the sun, no shirt, "sunscreen is for cry babies," he says; and rarely burns. My impression of the thing is that I get out of the sun when my skin starts to feel hot. My folks never really put sunscreen on us regularly as little kids, they just taught us to get out of the sun when you start to feel hot... I worry about my friends who tan. It seems a bit like staying in the sun too long about 15 minutes a week; every week... Freaky.

Best wishes to all who have gone there. Cancer is a bear.

If you read the article here, you would have seen that they mention "Dermatologists might treat some cases of psoriasis with in-office UVB light boxes".

I have a feeling that the UV lights dermatologists use are a little more regulated in terms of strength and variety of UV.

Additionally, you are generally just treating parts, and not sitting in a bikini or naked in a full-body, front and back UV light, as in a tanning bed. Plus, a tanning bed uses 95% UVA rays, which are the rays that cause cancer-causing damage. So, you are only getting about 5% UVB rays, which are the therapeutic rays.

Here's the title of the first thing you see at this link: "Acne phototherapy using UV-FREE high-intensity narrow-band blue light..." uh, that's UF-FREE, not UV. Sounds like something entirely different to me. There are many different kinds of radiation from the sun (visible light, heat, invisible light, etc.) but the kinds that cause tanning are damaging the skin, period. So while maybe some kinds of light are theraputic, a doctor telling you to get tanning rays for therapy is woefully ignorant at best. That's like medieval doctors using leeches and blood-letting.

does make you wonder, doesn't it? maybe a family member or good friend owns one. But, don't we all do that?

More likely she doesn't understand the risks and is suggesting a therapy outside her specialty. Once out of med school, docs tend to only continue their learning as it relates directly to their specialty. My husband is one, and while brilliant in his field, he believes some odd things about other areas like nutrition.

It's a big deal here in the North-Northwest... Doctors have started recommending a MINIMUM of 10,000IU daily for prevention of SAD. I've had to take as much as 20,000IU in the middle of winter.

We literally go from the min. sunrise being just shy of 4am and max sunset just before 11pm, to max. sunrise approaching 8:40 am and min. sunset just after 4pm. High doses of C, D, A, and Magnesium, plus exercise daily, is pretty much the only way around it. Some friends tried phosphorous lights last year, it's expensive, but houseplants love it.

Cheers.

funny how doctors think it is bad until they charge you for it then it is ok. they use much more powerfull units with UVB doses we can naver get to in any tanning unit. 311nm and broad band 280-320 with a hit at 304 and 308nm but because they say it is good and charge you 100 bucks a hit (insurance pays) then it is ok right??

That's how it's been for my family here in Nebraska. My grandpa worked from sun up 'til sun down for over 30 years on his ranch. Now it seems like everything is falling apart on him (going blind, arthritis, etc.) but he's only ever had 1 cancerous mole removed from his body, and that was last year. He's over 60 years old and only ever had 1. I love working in the sun in my cut off shirt and jeans, so it's a good thing I'm tan year-round so I don't burn easily ;) I stay positive. If I ever get cancer, so be it. I've fought with sporotrichosis (skin eating fungus) and multiple sports injuries that resulted in surgery and always bounced back eventually. Optimism is the best medicine at times :)

Too soon. Sorry, dude.

True. In part because we've stopped going outside.

Also of note, the rays that produce vitamin D are UVBs...they are the ones that cause sunburn, much less influence on skin cancer. They are also the rays that your SPF is referring to. Most sunscreens are very poor at blocking UVA rays.

As someone who has used sunscreen for years thinking it was helping protect against skin cancer and now has a documented vitamin D deficiency and a sun allergy, I feel a smidge duped. What was the point of all that money and chemicals?

Econ,

correct.

And a tan is an indicator that you had too much.

Obamacare saves money, not people. And the problem with saving that money, is that it was somebody's else's money originally!

I love the word "Obamacare" because I know I can pretty much disregard anyone that uses it. Also, in that "evil, socialist" health care reform that's actually conservative, capitalistic crap, there's a forced tax on tanning beds, so stop trying to blame Obama for this one.

I love that idea. I've always wanted a greenhouse. This is off topic, but I've have been thinking about getting a 55 gallon terrarium for my house. That kind of project is a sure way to clear the blues.

I did not excessively tan...and can count on two hands how many times I even used the tanning beds...I still ended up with melanoma....

The article does seem to cite to worst case situations. The one girl went to the tanning bed three times a week for six months! The author's bias against tanning beds is pretty obvious.

Still, the opposite end of the spectrum is that someone might never go to a tanning bed in their entire life and still get melanoma.

For those susceptible to skin cancer, tanning beds are a huge trigger. But for others, it may only be a moderate risk. Unfortunately, it isn't always easy to say who is a skin cancer risk and who isn't. But if you are naturally pale and tanning to look like Paris Hilton, be careful.

It would be quite a boring read if the article cited average examples, wouldn't it? Of course some people burn all the time and never get skin cancer, just as there are lifelong smokers that never get lung cancer. The same is true on the other side of the coin. Occasionally a healthy person who never smoked gets lung cancer, and someone who's never had a tan may get a melanoma. Risk factors are not the same as simple cause and effect.

UV exposure increases the risk of skin cancer, yes whether it comes from tanning lamps, or the sun, or some apparatus at your doctor's office. If the doctor is prescribing UV to treat some condition, then they need to be sure the patient knows the risks, and the importance of moderation. If they fail to communicate that to the patient, then they should be liable. If the patient does not heed their warning, then it's not the doctor's fault.

I have a history of melanoma in my family, and thus my dermatologist is a bit quick to remove "funny" looking moles.

I just recently had 3 removed on my back. Luckily, the biopsies came back benign. However, it's been about 3 weeks, and I still have huge, oozing, painful sores on my back.

So, there is no way in hell I would tempt fate and go to a tanning bed when I can get a sunburn just walking out to my mailbox.

For one, as another poster pointed out that most whites used to cover their entire bodies year round.

Another reason might be that skin cancer was relatively unknown until well into the 20th century.

But perhaps the biggest reason of all is that we live in an age of media hyping everything and wanting us to be afraid all the time. Yikes! I'm going to die if I go out into the sun! Oh noez!

"But perhaps the biggest reason of all is that we live in an age of media hyping everything and wanting us to be afraid all the time. Yikes! I'm going to die if I go out into the sun! Oh noez!"

Agreed. Fear has replaced sex as the media's cash cow.

Very true. Bob also died because he refused to get treatment.

Up until the 1900s, most Americans weren't living past 40-50 years of age, so they were not dying of "old people" diseases like skin cancer or prostate cancer, cancers that usually take a few years to kill you.

In Africa today, it is common in certain areas to have a life expectancy of only 40 years. That, coupled with the natural protection that African's melanin provides, gives us the explanation of why we don't see lots of skin cancer cases in indigenous African tribes.

"Old people diseases"? I was 31 when I was diagnosed with malignant melanoma, 1 year after my father passed from the same disease. He was 57 and had been diagnosed at age 25. People need to understand this disease doesn't come from age.

Carol,

My point is that if you live long enough, you are more likely to die from cancer.

When people were dropping dead from infections at age 40, few people ever lived long enough to develop a cancer that would kill them.

And that is why "old people" is in quotations...

I just don't see why my health care costs need to go up because others choose to engage in known risky behaviour, and then when the risk is realized, we all have to pay for their treatment. Choosing to tan or smoke should make you ineligible for for future lung or skin cancer insurance payments. If you are one of the lucky ones, no harm no foul, you won't care. If you are not, you made the choice.

By that logic, anyone who ever has any health condition as a result of their diet should be denied coverage. If you are obese, have diabetes, osteoporosis or COPD you are just plain out of luck. They chose to eat what they ate and they should have known better. Anyone who has ever caused a car accident should be denied auto insurance and a license. Anyone who has ever had substance abuse problems should be denied coverage. In fact, let's just eliminate insurance completely and go back to the 1930's level of risk acceptance. If you know you will have to pay your own doctor bills out of your own pocket, maybe you will do more to avoid going to the doctor. Of course, that will put a lot of doctors and insurers out of business, and we can't have that.

And good luck policing that, Enough. I've been paying huge premiums for years owning my own business and paying for a family plan and I can tell you right now that people going to tanning beds isn't what's making it so high. The high cost of medical insurance almost has less to do nowadays with actual diseases and more to do with things like fertility treatment which insurance companies must cover in the state I live in.

Chris is absolutely right about your logic. There is none that I can see.