Sunshine Linked To Fewer Heart Attacks & Strokes
How nitric oxide made by UVA from the sun and tanning beds may reduce your risk of heart attacks and strokes.
I promise this will not be full of technical jargon and consequently boring. If you want to geek out on the technical stuff please click the research study links at the bottom. For the rest of us, carry on…
First, I did not know until recently that there were so many photoproducts made from sunshine and tanning beds.
You probably know the only reliable source of Vitamin D is from unprotected exposure to UVB from the sun or tanning beds (a few tanning beds only deliver UVA — we don’t have any of those at Classic Tan or Rush Tan). But did you know sunshine is also responsible for helping us make serotonin, endorphin, nitric oxide, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor?
Okay, a little technical jargon but we are only going to talk about nitric oxide today.
It turns out that UVA (a close cousin to UVB) from the sun and tanning beds helps us make nitric oxide through unprotected exposure to our skin.
Why do I keep prefacing sun exposure with the word unprotected? Because the moment you apply sunscreen you defeat any potential benefit from sun exposure.
It turns out, according to the aforementioned studies at the bottom of this email, that nitric oxide is an excellent and productive vasodilator (1). The studies suggest non-burning sunshine could lead to fewer heart-attack and stroke-related deaths (2)(3)
Did you know there are more heart attacks and strokes in winter (4)?
I didn’t know until I read the most recent blog post from Dr. Marc Sorenson (5). You should check out his post if you want to geek out some more on this topic.
Winter is coming. Where are you going to get your regular dose of sunshine?
(1) Ultraviolet Radiation-Induced Production of Nitric Oxide: A multi-cell and multi-donor analysis. Graham Holliman, Donna Lowe, Howard Cohen, Sarah Felton & Ken Raj
(2) The health benefits of UV radiation exposure through vitamin D production or non-vitamin D pathways. Blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. Richard B Weller
(3) Short- and long-term sunlight radiation and stroke incidence. Shia T Kent 1, Leslie A McClure, Suzanne E Judd, Virginia J Howard, William L Crosson, Mohammad Z Al-Hamdan, Virginia G Wadley, Fredrick Peace, Edmond K Kabagambe
(4) Increased winter mortality from acute myocardial infarction and stroke: the effect of age. T Sheth, C Nair, J Muller, S Yusuf
(5) Nitric oxide. Miracle molecule of Sunlight on Skin. By Marc Sorenson, EdD
