Sunscreen Blocks the Body's Ability to Do This!

Scott: You've talked about sunscreen a little bit.  If we're in the sun to get our vitamin D, we've been told anytime we go out in the sun, we can't go out without sunscreen.  What does that do to our manufacturing of vitamin d and our overall health.

Dr. Luncinda Messer:  So, vitamin d is blocked by sunscreen, absolutely.  It's really important that people know that what they should be doing first is, according to their skin type, if they're skin type one, they have hardly any melanin, maybe you.

Scott: Yeah, probably.

Messer:  You have really low, you have white skin, no melanin, that's a type one.  Type one patients, basically, we tell them to go out in the sun to where you get your minimal erythemic dose.  And a minimal erythemic dose is when you start getting a little pink.  That might be 20-30 minutes for you, midday, summertime.  So if you get your pink, or erythemic dose after about 20 minutes.  After 20 minutes you go in and find either a shirt to cover up with, or get in the shade, or better yet, find a healthy, if you can, find a healthy sunscreen to apply to block any further sun.  Because what you don't want to happen is you don't want the further vitamin d, the further sun exposure causing a sun burn.  Once you get a sun burn, that negates the vitamin d absorption.  So it's really important that you know that.  You must just get your minimal erythemic dose and be done with it.  That means that you shouldn't wear your sunscreen at first, you should apply it after you get your sun exposure.  

Now I have type 3 skin, and I take two hours to get a pink, reddening, kind of a red, erythemic dose.  So it takes me two hours, it takes most people, um, African Americans over 3 to 4 hours.  That because we have natural sunscreen, this blocks our UVB light.  So you can imagine, a lot of people even my color will slather the sunscreen on, right away, so we're blocking our vitamin d.  All the more reason why you should be taking oral supplementation.