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Health Check: Scientists find sun damage continues long after exposure

SUNBATHING

25/02/2015

Scientists find sun damage continues long after exposure

BBC World Service - Health Check, Scientists find sun damage continues long after exposure

Why you are still at risk of skin cancer hours after moving into shade

Scientists find that sun damage lasts for hours after exposure; Two projects in Sweden experimenting with light therapy; Why teeth that rub can lead to mouth cancer

It is well known that sun exposure can damage the skin, but new research suggests that damage to skin cells continues for hours after coming out of the sun. However it is not all bad news. If scientists can develop the right products to apply to the skin, the discovery raises the prospect of developing a way of intervening and limiting the effect. Professor Douglas Brash, a biophysicist at Yale University School of Medicine in the US, led the research which has just been published in the journal Science.

Swedish light therapy
For people living near the Arctic Circle, winter means enduring long, dark nights and as little as two hours of sun each day. This can have wide-ranging health effects; from increasing the risk of depression to having difficulty concentrating and disturbed sleep. But now two projects in Sweden are trying to brighten things up. Malcolm Brabant reports from Sweden's first light therapy school in Umea in northern Sweden.

Mouth cancer & sharp teeth
Mouth and throat cancers are traditionally thought to be caused by the five s’s: Smoking, spirits, syphilis, spices and sharp teeth. But this last one on the list is somewhat neglected, despite Dr Christopher Perry, an ENT consultant at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, seeing a big epidemic of mouth cancer in lifelong non-smokers. So he carried out a retrospective analysis of hundreds of patients and found that after tobacco, sharp rubbing teeth were the next biggest carcinogen. He explains his findings to Health Check.


(Photo: Sunbathing. Credit: BBC)

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