The effects of the sun on us

The sun plays a very important role in our life, functioning as antidepressant, it also activates the D vitamin in order to develop our bones. Indeed, stimulated by the sun, it changes its inactive to an active state called D3 vitamin. Moreover, the sun gives us energy and stimulates the happiness, no need to wonder why in south countries, majority of people are always a smile on their face !!!

In north countries, when the sky is blue with a big yellow dot, people have better mood and ready to enjoy the beautiful day outside of their home. Depending where we are, the environment reflects the solar radiation differently so:

on water, it represents 20%
on snow, it represents 80%
on sand, it represents 25%
on grass, it represents between 15-25%

So don’t think that you are completely protected under the water and when we go to ski, we receive double doses, one from the sky directly and one from the snow reflection. At the end, the only protection is inside a bunker without any sunlight !!! Because even under grey clouds, 90% of the UV rays gets through them.

The sun creates 2 kinds of radiations called UVB and UVA. The difference is the following:

UVB can generate sun burnings, for example if you don’t put protection or not the good one, at the end of the day, your skin is red and hurts a little
UVA can generate skin diseases in long term, for example breast cancer for woman

Those 2 points are very important to take in account at the moment we decide to have a natural sunbath or not because even in a solarium center, the UVA cabin can be lethal (UVB cabin doesn’t exist because it is forbidden). All depend on how many times and how long we want to expose our skin with protection (of course) to avoid any damages to our body.

For people who like trekking, take note that for each 300 meters, the intensity of the radiation increases about 4% in spite that the temperature decreases so don’t forget your solar cream because without a good protection, you can contract burning, cancer, cutaneous aging… but in some way, it exists a little controversy because the sun can help to fight against some skin diseases like the acne, the psoriasis…

Like I said above, even if the temperature is low, it doesn’t mean that the radiation is less. This is also true for people who like to take a sunbath on the beach. The breeze of the sea can reduce the temperature but don’t be fool by the nature, the radiation is still strong.

Experts said that, depending of the time, the radiation can be more intense according to the angle of the sun on earth so for example, between 10h and 14h during summer time, the intensity is the strongest.

And for people who take medicines, the sun can develop a kind of immune reaction called photosensitivity, the consequences are skin injuries like eczema, urticaria…

So like you can guess, it depends a lot about us, each one decides what he/she wants to do with his/her own skin but one thing is sure, to protect our skin, we need to put a good protection.