• Vespair@lemm.ee
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    7 days ago

    Those make sense to me, but I’ll be honest with you, where I struggle is with the idea of sunscreen. How did our ancestors live outside constantly without any sunscreen but if I’m outside for more than 2 hours in the summer without it I come home looking like a burnt lobster?

    I’m sure the answer is that I’m ignorant, or the “natural causes” of yesteryear were really just undiagnosed skin cancer or something, but I have to admit it does seem like a real negative adaptation here from the viewpoint of my uneducated mind.

    • absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz
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      7 days ago

      Well there is that protective layer in the atmosphere that we fucked up.

      The ozone layer is slowly healing itself, but we still have a long way to go before it is stable again.

      Also as others pointed out, we don’t work the fields and spend most of our time outside any more…so the natural protection isn’t building up like it did in the past.

    • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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      7 days ago

      Have you ever seen an Australian rancher? They look like boiled lobsters

      When you get old and spend a lot of time outdoors, you look like a dried up prune. Regardless of skin color, typically

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      If they lived in areas with a lot of sunshine, they developed dark skin. If they didn’t, they developed light skin. Beyond that, if they were light skinned and moved to areas with a lot of sunshine they wore long sleeves and wide brimmed hats even in hot weather, and their face and neck skin turned to leather. They typically didn’t live long enough for skin cancer to be a concern.

      • Vespair@lemm.ee
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        7 days ago

        As I said in a other comment, I think “they didn’t live long enough” is a bit of misconception. I’ll repeat my comment here rather than writing it out again:

        "So I’m no expert, so take this with a grain of salt, but it’s my understanding that while average ages were much lower in the past, this number is heavily skewed by infant mortalities and deaths due to preventable disease. As I understand it, the expected age of an otherwise healthy individual was pretty comparable to us today. More people died young, but those who didn’t lived about as long as us. So I don’t think not living long enough for skin cancer to take effect really jives with my understanding of history.

        But again, I’m not an expert and the likelihood that I’m just an idiot who is wildly misunderstanding things is, frankly, high."

        • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          It’s the “more people died young” part that meant it wasn’t an ever present problem like it is today. We might have had more ozone to protect people too, although that’s just wild conjecture.

    • kireotick@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      You have to remember that people generally wore long sleeve clothing and hats. They did not expose much skin to the sun historically

    • microphone900@lemmy.ml
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      7 days ago

      That’s a great question! We didn’t really need sunscreen in prehistoric time because we adapted to the environments that we lived in and we didn’t migrate to new environments as quickly as we could in later times. Those adaptations are getting more tan more easily and growing thicker skin. We can still see this now in people who don’t use sunscreen and their skin looks tougher and more leathery. Also, there were some ancient sunscreens ranging from simple mud to pastes made from ground plants.

      Human skin stood up better to the sun before there were sunscreens and parasols – an anthropologist explains why - The Conversation

    • madcaesar@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      We need sunscreen becuase we’re indoors 8 and months of the year, then run out naked to sunbathe.

      If we were outside more and naturally built up a tan it really wouldn’t be that much of an issue for most people.

      • Vespair@lemm.ee
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        7 days ago

        I mean I definitely see your point, but as I understand it even field workers are encouraged to use sunscreen and farmers and others who spend a lot of time outdoors are at greater risk of long-term damage, not lesser, despite this supposed acclimation.

            • FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
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              7 days ago

              Sunscreen was invented in 1946, it looks like. Our ability to diagnose cancer has come a long, long way since then. So it would likely be difficult or impossible to answer this question, since 50 year old data about skin cancer incidence will be lower than modern level simply due to diagnostic advances.

              copied from a similar question

        • madcaesar@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          It’s all relative. Sunscreen itself has carcinogens. It’s kind of like blood pressure medication. It’s easy and works. But obviously exercising and eating better would be better.

          Same with the sun. Gradual exposure and not baking deliberately in the sun would be better, but sunscreen is easier.

          At the end of the day we’re extremely well adapted to the sun for the most part, within reason.

          • Vespair@lemm.ee
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            7 days ago

            I’ll say that I think if the situation was truly as simple and non-nuanced as you describe, I wouldn’t have any reason to be confused or uncertain on the topic.

            But as stated, since even those who adhere to best practices seem to be at higher risk with compound exposure, I think your claim of simple acclimation is a little lacking. I think there is truth in what you say, but far from the whole truth and it is what is missing which eludes me as well.

  • Alice@beehaw.org
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    7 days ago

    Where’s that tweet where an anti-vaxxer used the bubonic plague as an example of a disease that went away on its own.

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    Primitive forms of innoculation, antiseptic, and pasteurizing go back centuries if not millennia. The very idea of the small pox vaccine came out of the recognition that cow pox mitigated the risk of contagion. Milk maids were (unwittingly) vaccinating themselves for some time.

    And pasteurization is just cooking your food. Hell, the whole reason primitive people started baking bread, roasting meat, and brewing beer came down to the benefits of sterilization.

    These aren’t even new ideas, per say. They’re advances in technique, understanding of consequence, and means of distribution.

    • Danquebec@sh.itjust.works
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      7 days ago

      Pasteurization is even below what most would consider as cooking temperature. It’s getting your food really hot for a while but not boiling. It’s kind of like edging but in cooking.

    • someguy3@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      the whole reason primitive people started baking bread, roasting meat,

      It’s to start the break down of food. We evolved to outsource our digestion to cooking.

      Brewing beer is entirely different though.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        It’s to start the break down of food.

        That too. But killing parasites in meat and fish is another big benefit.

        We evolved to outsource our digestion to cooking.

        To a degree. But we also just died more often to infection and disease. Cooking reduced mortality rates, which spurred a larger population, whose members transmitted the knowledge of how and what to cook before eating.

        • someguy3@lemmy.world
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          8 days ago

          I mean our evolution really kicked off so to speak from outsourcing our digestion. That meant more calories could go to the brain. That’s the aspect I’m focused on.

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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            8 days ago

            Well… if you want to get really into anthropology, there’s an argument that outsourcing our digestion (via early agriculture) actually made us a lot weaker and dumber. It was social pressure (often explicit enslavement) that forced people into the agricultural lifestyle. But that a booming population powered by cheap, reliable agriculture allowed multitudes to outperform by volume what exceptionally smart and strong but scare individuals achieved in small tribes.

            More advanced forms of sterilization became necessary as populations hit certain critical levels of risk for pathogens and other hygiene problems. And so modern techniques, like vaccination and pasteurization, are really just extensions of this ten-thousand year trend towards urbanization that require health and safety precautions as a condition of our dense population centers.

            This wasn’t just biological evolution. Our ability to process, transmit, and record information made our species heavily dependent on these technological techniques and the passing down of the instructions to perform them. The health risks are now bound up in our ability to maintain a working, useful library of information and to perform the rituals necessary to keep our food and water sufficiently sterile.

  • NutWrench@lemmy.ml
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    7 days ago

    Walk into any old graveyard and notice all the tiny little tombstones of children who died before the age of two. Before vaccines were in use.

    Now notice how almost NONE of those tombstones are recent.

    • Agent641@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Smaller graves fit more efficiently into the cemetary, AND they stimulate the economy via the funeral industry, which Im heavily invested in!

      • Some political ghoul, probably
    • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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      7 days ago

      Obviously they aren’t recent, it’s an old graveyard.

      You know why nobody living in a town gets buried in its cemetery? Because they are living.

  • ben_dover@lemmy.ml
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    7 days ago

    my grandad used to buy fresh milk from a farmer around the corner - until he got salmonella from it and almost died