Related to the reductionist thinking around vitamin D is the fact that for decades now, we have received a nearly universal recommendation to slather ourselves with sunscreen whenever we’re in the sun.15 Reduce your exposure to the sun, the logic goes, and skin cancer rates fall. True enough. Guess what goes up when sun exposure goes down, though: blood pressure. And as blood pressure climbs, so do rates of heart disease and stroke. People who avoid the sun have higher overall mortality rates than do people who seek it. A research study on Swedish women reported this remarkable result:
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