The Healthy Sun Exposure Debate Is Here—What's Hype, What's Dangerous, and What's Actually True
My take as a longtime beauty editor.
A new skincare debate is coming to your TikTok feed: healthy sun exposure. Considering how vigilant dermatologists and estheticians are about sun protection, this is quite the 180 for the larger skincare conversation, but a book released this June is destined (in fact, intended) to ruffle some feathers in the beauty community and beyond. In Defense of Sunlight by Rowan Jacobsen investigates the health benefits of going out into the sun. Across 250+ pages, Jacobsen includes research linking lack of sun to heart disease, dementia, autoimmune disease, and more. Beyond the familiar vitamin D discussion, he notes that these benefits may be connected to other biological reactions to sunlight. Most notably, he cites a 2020 paper by 15 scientists published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, which estimates (key word: estimates) 820,000 deaths a year in Europe and the US from sun deficiency. An eye-catching stat, to put it mildly.
Then there’s Jacobsen’s poke at America’s “campaign to prevent overexposure,” which he describes as “a kind of fundamentalism.” The American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) recommends that all people should apply SPF 30 or higher to skin not covered by clothing every day you go outside and reapply after two hours if you stay outside, no matter your skin tone or the weather. Some dermatologists even recommend sunscreen while indoors if you work near a window since UVA rays can penetrate glass. Jacobsen frames the approach as “sunscreen absolutism” in his viral Atlantic article in 2024 which questioned the US’s anti-sun stance and earned him a stern response letter from the AAD. Now, two years later, he’s doubled down with this deep dive.
Jacobsen writes about sunlight’s benefits to our microbiome, circadian rhythm, and immune systems, and also reports that while sunscreen prevents common skin cancers, it’s not clearly proven to prevent melanoma specifically, calling a central premise of the industry into question. “Moderate sun exposure provides tremendous benefits,” he writes.
Still, a book like this makes me, a longtime beauty writer, nervous. Not because I see it as a contradiction of my pro-sunscreen work, nor do I think it’s 100 percent misinformation, but because it presents nuances and technicalities for which today’s media formats are not ideal. Reading this book, I ask myself: Is this MAHA? Is it a watershed moment? What will the dermatologists I work with think if I even touch this subject? More importantly, what will a busy reader take away at first glance if all they have is a first glance?
What Is the Argument for "Healthy Sun" In 2026?
I’ve written about sunscreen for nearly 20 years, reporting on skin cancer as well as cosmetic benefits like wrinkle and spot prevention. I am a sun protection know-it-all who has visited sun filter labs around the world, guided many friends to the SPF they enjoy wearing every day year-round, and pressured just as many into annual skin cancer checks. In fact, it was this pressure that helped my mom catch her melanoma in its early stages. Grave statistics are practically tattooed on my brain: More people are diagnosed with skin cancer each year in the US than all other cancers combined. It’s estimated that the number of new melanoma cases diagnosed in 2026 will increase by 10.6 percent. Nearly 20 Americans die from melanoma every day. I also have a very fair skin tone and am, well, vain by profession, so I’m all in with minimizing UV exposure.
And yet.
Jacobsen’s book presents attention-grabbing caveats page after page. “... Rates of skin cancer continued to rise despite massive sun-protection efforts...” “One of the weirdest things about melanoma is that the survival rate is worse among those who receive little sun exposure.” “People exposed to the most light were 34 percent less likely to expire than people who got less daylight than average.” “Immunologists were finding that sun deprivation during childhood led to higher rates of autoimmune disease.” I think about the high rates of multiple sclerosis in my cloudy hometown of Seattle. I also think about how these snippets will come across out of context on Instagram in the coming weeks.
It is important to note that he is not anti-sunscreen. The bigger issue is that we are not going outside enough.
Jacobsen, whose press tour this month has included appearances on popular bro podcasts that make me bristle, like Joe Rogan, as well as at liberal bookstores, like my local Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, expresses similar concerns. “Here I am, a Vermont progressive, and you write a book about sunlight and you’re automatically MAHA,” says Jacobsen during an interview in May. “Hopefully a high level discussion can be had, and books are so good for that. But people’s attention spans are really shrinking.”
It is important to note that he is not anti-sunscreen. “If sunscreen gets you outside more that’s a total win,” he says. The bigger issue is that we are not going outside enough. We already miss out thanks to our indoor lifestyles, but it’s further undermined if people are terrified of UV. “One of my concerns was that in an attempt to do a good thing, the [anti-UV] messaging got so strong that it was keeping people indoors unnecessarily and that’s not good,” he says. In other words, with a modern screen-focused lifestyle that keeps us more sedentary and inside as it is, we don’t need added incentive to avoid the outdoors.
The healthy sun debate is much older than sunscreen itself: A century ago, doctors literally prescribed sunbathing (heliotherapy) for conditions ranging from tuberculosis to general vitality. My mom tells me my grandfather was sent from Michigan to Florida to recover from polio around 1930. Not long after, antibiotics revolutionized medicine, melanoma became more commonly diagnosed, and medicine pivoted, researching and publicizing its connection to the sun for the next many decades. Today a small but vocal group of researchers and clinicians at top universities (as well as some MAHA politicians and wellness influencers) ask if we overcorrected, but this tends to be fraught territory. About ten years ago, I interviewed a famous board-certified dermatologist with a cult skincare line who told me, strictly off the record, that they did recommend about 20 minutes of direct sun exposure every morning for health benefits including, but not limited to, vitamin D. They didn’t want to be quoted, however, because they worried it could threaten industry relationships and even their certification. I agree that it would have.
What Is the Medical Community's Current Stance on Sun Exposure?
I never heard another dermatologist recommend more sun exposure again, on or off the record, but another headline-making doctor recently picked up a similar thread publicly only to land in hot water. “You need daylight, girl,” orthopedic doctor and skincare brand founder Barbara Sturm recently told WSJ. Magazine. “Go in the morning sun when there’s low UV and get early morning light.” Comments under an interview clip of Dr. Sturm advocating for sun exposure on Emma Grede’s podcast range from “So stupid!” and “You can tell she is not a dermatologist.” to “I’m so happy to hear someone say this! The sun is LIFE!!” Though Dr. Sturm never advises against sunscreen in her interviews—in fact she sells an SPF in her brand—the beauty world was aghast as though she had. “Did you see the Barbara Sturm sun thing?” colleagues asked me with raised eyebrows over business lunches the following week.
Reductive messaging is a double-edged sword. While it dumbs down nuance into snackable tidbits of misinformation that practically power the internet, it also simplifies important public health advice to memorable action. Pregnant women need folic acid. Wear your seatbelt always. Get 7-9 hours of sleep. Wash your hands. In the case of standard sun protection guidelines, if skin cancer deaths aren’t falling (they aren’t), of course derms would balk at adding caveats to the standard wear-SPF-30-every-day-you’re-outside guidance. “AAD member dermatologists see the effects of skin cancer every day, and UV exposure is the most preventable skin cancer risk factor,” then AAD president Seemal R. Desai, MD, FAAD, wrote in a 2024 response letter.
Sunscreen and being in the sun are not directly at odds: sunscreen was created to enable time outside.
This tension is heightened by the political climate of health leadership, as well as urgent headlines about the dangerous return of tanning. It feels dramatic because it appears that a misstep in either direction can cost you your life. So if you feel the need to decide whether there is a big conspiracy to unearth, pause. In reality, using sunscreen and being in the sun are not directly at odds: sunscreen was created to enable time outside.
“Some amount of sun every day is good for psychology and sleep patterns, but there is an appropriate way of experiencing the outdoors,” says board-certified dermatologist Dhaval Bhanusali, a New York City- and Florida-based dermatologist who helped formulate Rhode, among many other brands. “I would never tell my patients not to go out in the sun—just wear protection.” Dr. Bhanusali advises universal daily SPF 30 or higher for all patients, in line with AAD recommendations.
Meanwhile, Dr. Richard Weller, professor of dermatology at the University of Edinburgh who wrote the foreword for In Defense of Sunlight, diverts from this norm.
“My advice, speaking medically, is don’t get sunburned,” says Dr. Weller. “If I go somewhere sunny for holiday I wear sunscreen to avoid getting burned, but [otherwise I don’t because] I’m not worried about wrinkles.” He agrees that sunscreen prevents photoaging—he’s the chief medical officer for a new UV tracking wearable called Gem, “so you can age smarter in the sun”—but he doesn’t call for daily sunscreen in low UV environments, like Scotland, unless it’s for those cosmetic benefits. Scotland, he tells me, also has a high rate of MS.
The Evolving Conversation Around "Healthy Sun"
Dr. Weller believes he won’t be alone forever in his more moderate sunscreen approach. “Science is self-correcting,” Dr. Weller says. “It works from the best information at the time. You’re continually accumulating, reconsidering, and moving on. And I’m frustrated with dermatologists who won’t reconsider [the guidelines], but they’re beginning to.”
Like hormone replacement therapy, the recommended age for mammograms, BMI as a health measure, and how to introduce babies to peanuts, guidance does sometimes evolve. In fact Australia, which is considered a sun protection thought leader, has revisited its sun protection guidance to offer more personalization. In 2023, The Australian Skin and Skin Cancer Research Centre issued a position statement with sun protection recommendations broken down into three different risk groups that factor in skin tone, which has become adopted clinically. The official public health message did not change, but this update is a standout globally and spurred Jacobsen’s Atlantic article.
People like to take polarizing stances, but a true physician will always weigh the cost and benefit of any situation. Extreme anything is not good.
Dr. Bhanusali
As this hot topic kicks off, I come back to the concept of absolutism. We are in the era of -maxxing and it’s arguably an American tradition to take something to an extreme, from total sun abstinence to unprotected sun seeking. Because the podcast clips will inevitably be flying, my hope is that derms and other skincare experts do not simply reject this book on its premise alone. To do so will likely alienate the very people most at-risk of unhealthy sun habits. Instead, I would ask doctors, what research about healthy sun exposure is valid in your professional view and how could it apply to the sun curious patient in front of you?
“People like to take polarizing stances, but a true physician will always weigh the cost and benefit of any situation,” says Dr. Bhanusali. “Extreme anything is not good.”
If you are looking for a head-to-head on this subject, you’re in luck. Dr. Weller tells me that at next year’s World Congress of Dermatology in Guadalajara, Mexico—a summit that convenes every four years like the Olympics and World Cup—he will be arguing one side of an Oxford-style debate on healthy sun exposure.
For my part, I won’t make any changes in my diligent SPF routine, but I am considering sunnier vacations in the winter and whether I’ve gotten some time outside each day, the same way I think about whether I've gotten enough steps. As for Jacobsen’s bottom-line advice, he writes: “Go outside. There’s no need to overthink it. Wear a hat, wear sunscreen, do what you gotta do, just get out there. That’s right, don’t throw away your sunscreen… Most sunscreens also allow a smidge of UV to sneak through, and often a smidge is all you need.”
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Meet the Experts
Rowan Jacobsen writes about science and nature and the less-explored corners of the world for Harper’s, Outside, The Atlantic, Scientific American, Smithsonian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, MIT Technology Review, Businessweek, and others, and his work has been anthologized in The Best American Science Nature Writing and other collections. He has received awards from the James Beard Foundation, the Society of American Travel Writers, and the Overseas Press Club. He is the author of nine books, including A Geography of Oysters, Fruitless Fall, and Truffle Hound, several of which have been named to Best Book of the Year lists by The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, NPR, and Publishers Weekly. He has performed with Pop-Up Magazine, lectured at Harvard and Yale, and appeared on CBS, NBC, and NPR. He has been an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellow, writing about endangered diversity on the borderlands between India, Myanmar, and China; a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, focusing on the environmental and evolutionary impact of synthetic biology; and a Nova Media Fellow, researching the science of sun exposure.
Richard Weller is an academic dermatologist and Professor of Medical Dermatology at the University of Edinburgh, UK. His work is equally divided between clinical practice, and research on the systemic effects of sunlight on health.
Dhaval G. Bhanusali, MD, FAAD, is a board-certified dermatologist, founder of Hudson Dermatology Longevity Science, and a clinical instructor at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. An Allure A-List honoree and dubbed the “King of Formulation” by Elle and Forbes, he serves as Dermatologist-in-Residence for rhode and Global Innovation Partner for Neutrogena. He is the founder of HairStim Labs, Skin Medicinals, and AIRE Health, and Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Elm Biosciences, a science-led skincare venture with Martha Stewart.
