TO: All melanoma researchers, doctors, and patients.
Examine any book or website about melanoma, or visit any dermatologist's office, and you will find plentiful information on how to minimize or eliminate your sun exposure, but none on how to optimize it.
Minimizing sun exposure is very easy to accomplish; indeed, it is foolproof. Sunscreens, clothing, and staying indoors are commonly prescribed approaches, but even without any of them, a suntan naturally inhibits carcinogenic doses of ultraviolet radiation.
Optimizing sun exposure is a much more difficult problem--particularly for those with fair skin in non-native climates--because it involves avoiding extremes. Knowing whether an exposure regimen is too much or not enough requires specialized attention to the skin.
Note that some people in some climates have a window of opportunity lasting literally minutes in which they must acquire the necessary Vitamin D3, thus leaving their skin most susceptible to a deficiency and melanoma.
James Semmel
Albuquerque, New Mexico
reference:
http://www.mpip.org/bb/shtml/330498.shtml Last month's follow up to the 3rd annual discussion: "Is melanoma simply a Vitamin D deficiency cancer?"