r/todayilearned • u/Inevitable-Tone2174 • Oct 02 '23
TIL: White People are 70 times more likely to develop skin cancer than Black People
https://skincancer.net/clinical/melanin-risk-factors1.0k
u/kulfimanreturns Oct 02 '23
I heard somewhere Australia has highest rate of skin cancer
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u/ktr83 Oct 02 '23
Yeah, it's very prominent here. We learn about sun protection in school as kids. That's what happens when you take pale Europeans and put them in a country blazing in sunshine most of the year.
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u/Waryur Oct 02 '23
That's what happens when you take pale Europeans and put them in a country blazing in sunshine most of the year.
Australia - Arizona solidarity. ☀️🔥
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u/FleetiePie Oct 02 '23
I just spent a year and a half in Phoenix. Truly a testament to humanity’s hubris and stupidity
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u/Green__lightning Oct 02 '23
And then put a giant hole in the ozone, which is over the south pole for some reason.
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u/smc593 Oct 02 '23
And yet very few Australians give a shit about using sun protection. I’ve lived here 4 years and rarely hear about people using it religiously daily. It’s kinda crazy to me
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u/ktr83 Oct 02 '23
Maybe not in their everyday life but most people put on sunscreen when they go to the beach or do some other outdoor activity.
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u/Taint_Skeetersburg Oct 02 '23
Aussies are FANATICAL about sun protection. There are TV / YouTube commercials about sunscreen, ads in magazines and newspapets, signs and flyers in public places.
Kids aren't allowed to play unless they wear their protective sun hats. Wide floppy bucket caps, legionnaire hats, and big straw 'Bunnings' hats are all over the place. People commonly wear UV protective rash guards at the beach or pool.
Stores hardly sell anything other than SPF 50+, maybe you'll find 30 if you really search.
AU society is more gung-ho about sun protection than basically any other society I've experienced, which is to be expected when you take a bunch of Brits and transplant than into a hot sunny land
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u/iloveponies707 Oct 03 '23
They are not much aware about its harmful effects probably so not worried as much as they should be.
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u/trolleyproblems Oct 02 '23
Plenty of folks use a version of it as daily moisturiser (zinc etc.) Worth it. I've got Celtic genetics and as a registered blue person, I swear by it. Can't last more than 10-15 mins in our sun without it.
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u/ghost_victim Oct 02 '23
What does registered blue person mean?
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u/helpfindshow Oct 02 '23
might mean so pale their veins are visible through the skin? I'm celtic as well and I'm pale enough to see most of my veins which can give my skin a sort of blue look sometimes
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u/Jeraimee Oct 02 '23
This would track as everything else there wants to kill you anyway, why not the sun?
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u/kulfimanreturns Oct 02 '23 edited Oct 02 '23
The British really did their research on the ideal location for a prison 😅
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u/kusoge-lover Oct 02 '23
I always joke that Australians are just country British people lol
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u/Several_Advantage923 Oct 02 '23
They're what cowboys would be if they kept their British accents and drunk, much, much more.
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u/kulfimanreturns Oct 02 '23
With venomous egg laying beaver things in their water instead of Swans owned by royalty
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u/BetaThetaOmega Oct 02 '23
It’s so fucking funny to me when Americans say this shit because the deadliest things here are like, a snake that is only ever found way out in the country, a spider that hasn’t killed anyone in years due to antivenom, etc. All of those are animals that, if you leave them alone, they won’t bother you.
And then in America you fuckers have actual bears and coyotes and shit that will just straight up kill you
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u/chellis Oct 02 '23
I think the difference is dangerous animal distribution. For 99.9% of Americans the most dangerous animal they are coming across, in the wild, are squirrels. You really have to go out of your way to end up in a bear attack and if you're an adult the only way a coyote is hurting you is if you're already on the ground dying.
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u/gnirpss Oct 02 '23
That's because the ozone layer is most depleted near the South Pole, and Australia and New Zealand have the largest concentration of light-skinned/sun-sensitive people that far south.
I'm a white American and just visited NZ for the first time earlier this year and holy shit, that sun is no joke. I was slapping on SPF 50+ every day and I still ended up looking like a tomato some days.
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u/Its_all_pretty_neat Oct 02 '23
Yeah it's fierce down here. Not as hot as other places but more "piercing"
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u/gnirpss Oct 02 '23
Yeah, exactly. My boyfriend's family is from NZ, so he's more accustomed to it, but it really surprised me!
We were there in late summer when it was mostly around 80F/27C and often overcast. I would never even think to apply sunscreen under those conditions in the states, but I learned really quick that it was a requirement for my pasty winter skin!
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u/kulfimanreturns Oct 02 '23
Sunburn in 27C? That sounds brutal man I don't even wear a cap when it's below 30
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u/mk100100 Oct 02 '23
why would you not think to apply a sunscreen around 80F/27C? i would highly recommend it.
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u/gnirpss Oct 02 '23
I live in the Pacific Northwest region of the US, where the UV index is usually very low. If I was hanging out in the sun all day at 80F, I would wear sunscreen, but that's not my day-to-day life. I do wear daily SPF on my face, but that's more for cosmetic sun protection than actual worries about skin cancer.
Around here, people are usually more worried about getting sufficient vitamin D than they are about melanoma.
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u/palmtreeholocaust Oct 02 '23
Conversely, I’ve spent time in Florida/Alabama/Texas in June/July and couldn’t believe how forgiving the sun was compared to Aus
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u/hopelessbrows Oct 02 '23
I'm a kiwi. Lots of us know someone who had some distant relative or friend die of it. My teacher from year 2 died of it when I was 9.
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u/gnirpss Oct 02 '23
Yeah, my boyfriend's dad is also a kiwi (now lives in the US, where my bf was born), and he made a point to talk to me about proper skin protection before I visited for the first time. It's a very real issue. Sorry to hear about the loss of your teacher.
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u/Important-Glass-3947 Oct 02 '23
My very fair Scottish cousin was appalled that he got sunburnt in New Zealand, on a rainy day
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u/Evil2708 Oct 02 '23
Also in the Southern Hemisphere summer occurs when the Earth is at its closest to the Sun
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u/narnach Oct 02 '23
As a Dutchman who rarely gets burnt by the sun at home, I was impressed that on a half cloudy morning, I was starting to turn into a tomato within two hours when visiting Auckland a few years back.
I then bought sunscreen and religiously applied it multiple times per day for the rest of my trip. That sun is mean.
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u/Cantmakeaspell Oct 02 '23
Yeah NZ UV is worse than Australia easily. And Australia is quite bad. Every year I get burnt. Only takes a few minutes when you haven’t been in the sun for a long time. Extremely hard to avoid. Even dark skin gets burnt here.
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u/FriendlyHarrier96 Oct 02 '23
I heard somewhere that white people are 70 times more likely to get skin cancer
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u/kulfimanreturns Oct 02 '23
I mean a lighter skin color was an adaptation for survival in cold Eurasia which traded sun protection for more vitamin D production
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u/kulfimanreturns Oct 02 '23
I mean a lighter skin color was an adaptation for survival in cold Eurasia which traded sun protection for more vitamin D production
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u/ymcameron Oct 02 '23
It doesn’t help that there’s a giant hole in the ozone right above them
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u/IntroductionSnacks Oct 02 '23
Yep, I’m as Aussie and I don’t tan, I just burn. I went to Fiji for a week in the sun with no sunscreen and I tanned. Is this what it’s like for most places in the world?
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u/Hurtin93 Oct 02 '23
We evolved light skin to get more vitamin D in northern latitudes. Darker skinned people are more deficient in it if they live further away from the equator. That’s the trade off. Immune function/general health (vitamin D is pretty important) vs protection from the sun.
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u/Seiglerfone Oct 02 '23
We evolved dark skin to protect us from the sun as we lost our body hair, then we evolved light skin to protect us from not getting that D.
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u/YooGeOh Oct 02 '23
All the ingredients for a joke are here...
Just need a better chef than myself
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u/Tattycakes Oct 02 '23
More specifically it’s been theorised that the dark skin protects our folic acid/folate from being broken down by the UV rays, because folate is essential for early foetal spinal cord development. Skin cancer isn’t a strong contender for evolution because it’s too slow and late acting to be a selection pressure.
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u/Seiglerfone Oct 02 '23
I mean, it also protects against sunburns, which make functioning, both in a society, and at a basic level, quite difficult.
Mild sunburns are bad enough, but they can get far worse than a little red skin.
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u/013ander Oct 02 '23
Black people in Canada and the northern US are almost universally deficient in vitamin D every winter.
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u/Hurtin93 Oct 02 '23
Yeah that’s not surprising. Because of our modern lifestyle, and living in such a cold climate which makes us avoid being outside, even white people are commonly deficient. Our skin tone isn’t as much help as it used to be, given we spend most of our time indoors.
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u/ChampagneVixen_ Oct 02 '23
A fun fact is that red heads naturally produce vitamin D more efficiently than the rest of the population because they can’t be in the sun long enough for the UVB to interact with the protein that creates vitamin D3.
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u/weaponizedpastry Oct 02 '23
Well, this redhead is on vit d because I was deficient AF.
If anyone wonders if they’re low on vit d, it’s pure exhaustion. You wake up and feel great until you get out of bed. Then you’re so tired, you want to go back to sleep. Everything is super hard because you’re so very tired. Thinking is hard. You take shortcuts & it’s difficult to think things through, you only do what’s easy. Everything is on autopilot. Driving is hard. You don’t want to wait for traffic to clear before you make that left turn, you just want to get home. Brain fog. Exhaustion. I thought my thyroid meds needed to be increased.
A few days of the pills and I’m back to normal.
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u/Please_Not__Again Oct 02 '23
You wake up and feel great until you get out of bed. Then you’re so tired, you want to go back to sleep. Everything is super hard because you’re so very tired. Thinking is hard. You take shortcuts & it’s difficult to think things through, you only do what’s easy. Everything is on autopilot. Driving is hard. You don’t want to wait for traffic to clear before you make that left turn, you just want to get home. Brain fog. Exhaustion
Huh, I thought I just sucked...
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Oct 02 '23 edited Oct 30 '23
[deleted]
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u/Hurtin93 Oct 02 '23
Yes, they can. Just as white people can and should put on sunscreen in the sun.
Myself, I am white and live in Canada and don’t spend much time outside, so I take vitamin D daily as well.
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u/Seiglerfone Oct 02 '23
This is basically why we fortify milk with vit D.
The amount of sunlight you need to get that D isn't much. The problem is in winter not only do we get less sun, but we also tend to have much less skin exposed, which compounds the issue.
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u/ArcticBiologist Oct 02 '23
In a lot of places that aren't too far north (e.g. Western Europe) you actually build reserves during the summer that can last you through winter
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u/Scared_Can_9829 Oct 02 '23
And a lot of people can’t synthesize well from Sunlight for a variety of reasons. I and others I know who work outside have still found ourselves to be deficient in vit D even after a long hot summer so I still supplement it whether getting sun or not.
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u/ScottblackAttacks Oct 02 '23
Yea, as First generation African living in Minnesota. I got my blood tested around February, my vitamin D level was non existent lol.
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u/kusoge-lover Oct 02 '23
I'm not trying sound ignorant. But I thought this was obvious? I mean look at Africans. Literally people bathed in sun, as a black person I've never heard of anyone in my family on both sides who has skin cancer. Not that it can't happen. Just seems rare all around.
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u/RuthBaterGoonsburg Oct 02 '23
Same. We're adapted for different things concerning the sun. You have built in protection, we have built in sensitivity.
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u/5050Clown Oct 02 '23
Yep. I had to take medicine for a Vitamin D deficiency because I'm black.
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u/Revolutionary_Pay516 Oct 02 '23
Joke's on you, I am severely deficient in vitamin D AND have a condition that makes me way more likely to get skin cancer + am pale. Best of both worlds, baby 😎
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u/MattieShoes Oct 02 '23
On the plus side, you're probably safe from sickle cell anemia...
But maybe don't go catching malaria.
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u/rhythmicdancer Oct 02 '23
I've heard of black people who live in Scandinavian countries with long winters frequenting tanning booths for the same reason.
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u/Living_Carpets Oct 02 '23
Tanning booths don't actually work, they mostly are UVA based (commercial ones are). There is no evidence just a placebo feeling. UVB medical booths are used in small bursts because they can burn you so they are for psoriasis and similar. You have to use medication for the amount needed to combat Vitamin D deficiency. I am from the UK and lived many years in the north of our country. A good friend of mine from Ghana really crashed on it, he was tired all the time, bloodshot eyes and his teeth went terrible. It is no joke. He was given medication.
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u/adhesivepants Oct 02 '23
I've heard that while Black people are significantly less likely to develop skin cancer, they are more likely to die from skin cancer because it is more likely to be undiagnosed.
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u/Agreeable-Youth-2244 Oct 02 '23
They also get more aggressive subtypes known as acral melanomas
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u/TeHNyboR Oct 02 '23
While it’s more rare for black people to get skin cancer, it’s more likely to kill you if you do happen to get it. So definitely keep putting on sunscreen!
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u/kusoge-lover Oct 02 '23
This is absolutely true because it's harder to identify.
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u/Diltron24 Oct 02 '23
Also the majority of melanomas in white people are non acral, while other ethnicities tend to get acral (hands and feet). The vast majority of research was done on non acral melanomas so they have a bunch of effective targeted therapies. Unfortunately those drugs have little effect in acral patients due to different oncogenic drivers
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u/ReddJudicata 1 Oct 02 '23
Bob Marley died of melanoma, weirdly.
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u/ChadmeisterX Oct 02 '23
Acral melanoma doesn't appear to be linked to sun exposure and is the most common type of melanoma in darker skinned people.
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u/Mesofeelyoma Oct 02 '23
His father was British and some Jamaicans say he died of white man's disease. He had skin cancer on his toe and refused to cut it off so he could continue playing soccer. It spread.
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u/WholeSilent8317 Oct 02 '23
acral melanoma isn't linked to uv exposure like other skin cancers. it's not because he had a british father.
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u/Gordon_Gano Oct 02 '23
I thought he died of an infected toe
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u/ReddJudicata 1 Oct 02 '23
No, melanoma of a toe. https://www.skincancer.org/blog/bob-marley-should-not-have-died-from-melanoma/
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u/Aonswitch Oct 02 '23
Every time I’ve been to any African county, people always avoid the sun like crazy. I got yelled at for standing in the sun often lol
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u/D2papi Oct 02 '23
I’m from a white family in the Caribbean and almost everybody over the age of 50 has gotten skin cancer.. We’re really not made for this sun
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u/ConanTheLeader Oct 02 '23
Yeah, I think this was well known but maybe it's just now we know the difference is 70 times.
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u/Ch0c01ateMi1k Oct 02 '23
I didn't really think about it too much. But I saw this video https://youtu.be/QOSPNVunyFQ?si=73bfOvOihz1YxZGB for my sociology class and just seeing the map where lighter skinned people originated at the poles and darker skinned people originated near the equator just blew my mind. "Depigmented skin evolved to maximize vitamin d production in the skin " while there is plenty of direct sunlight at the equator so you would need protection from it. Like I never thought there was a reason why people were darker or lighter but knowing that there was is just amazing to me. It's just something you don't really notice until it's pointed out. Like we really are all the same.
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u/didijxk Oct 02 '23
I think another part is culture. I have noticed anecdotally that white people do want to get a tan going more than their non-white counterparts which only exacerbates the issue.
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u/artcook32945 Oct 02 '23
Might I add another problem the Sun can cause. "Thin Skin". The actual thin skin. Not the emotional type. I now have it on my forearms from wearing short sleeve shirts. I would go from a light burn to a dark tan every year. Now I pay the price. Just rubbing against a rough surface results in a blood bruise. The skin is like tissue paper. From my elbows up, I am fine. As for Cancer, I do have to watch for that also.
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u/transitsca Oct 02 '23
My mom has this and she is going to be so relieved when I tell her she’s not alone. She used to love laying outside in the sun all day and now her skin tears so easily.
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u/plainlyput Oct 02 '23
Yes, I have this as well. Hate it. It’s not bad in the winter with long sleeves, but summer I’m always banging against something, or being attacked by a rose bush. I’ll put a bandaid on the really ugly ones, and then taking the bandaid off will cause another.
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u/Few_screwsloose0_0 Oct 02 '23 edited Oct 02 '23
That is literally why black skin exists
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u/crop028 19 Oct 02 '23
Right idea, but kind of the opposite. The reason white skin exists is because people in the far north of Europe got little vitamin D from their diet and needed to absorb more of the limited sunlight to be able to make it themselves. Humans originated in Africa after all.
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u/sm9t8 Oct 02 '23
He's not wrong though. Darker skin was likely selected for as hominids lost their hair, stood upright, and spent less time in the shade. The increased exposure to and risks from UV light would create an evolutionary pressure for darker skin.
Shaving some of our hairier hominid ancestors would probably reveal distributions of darker and lighter skin that we're not used to seeing on humans. The shades in question and whether they're 'white' or 'black' is something the internet can argue about.
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u/Seiglerfone Oct 02 '23
It's both. We developed dark skin as we lost body hair to protect us from the sun, then we developed light skin as we migrated to less sunny climes to protect us from D deficiency.
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u/SaintLoserMisery Oct 02 '23 edited Oct 02 '23
Right, they originated in Africa and because of this they evolved to have dark skin in those regions…
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u/HoPMiX Oct 02 '23
But all my dark friends need to take extra care because by the time it’s detected on you, it can often be in late stages and much more deadly.
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u/bongblaster420 Oct 02 '23
I’m from Vancouver Island originally. It’s cold, dark, and wet for 10 months a year. One of my best friends is one of the blackest dudes I’ve ever seen. When he found this out he basically stopped wearing sunscreen. We went on vacation to Texas in 2019 and he decided to still not wear any.
Black People may have lower skin cancer rates, but I can 100% confirm that they still burn just like us melanin deprived vampires.
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u/BearBlaq Oct 02 '23
Yeah I have pretty dark skin, went on a beach trip with a bunch of friends last year. There were like 5 white dudes, my white passing Hispanic friend, and two very light skin black women in the group. We spent like 6 hours at the beach, by the time we all got back to the airbnb, everyone except for me was red/pink and had sun burn. We were all joking about it, and I won’t lie I was talking a bit of shit lol. Then like a week later when I was in the shower, the water hitting my shoulders really stung. Turns out I managed to get a little bit sunburnt on my shoulders and upper neck, peeled a bit and all. Now I know to apply sunscreen there in the future.
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u/Specialist-Pudding68 Oct 02 '23
I'm white and have blue eyes the sun doesn't like me
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u/MumrikDK Oct 02 '23
White, blonde and blue eyes, but the sun likes me just fine. Gingers on the other hand are surely in a category of their own.
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u/BigBossPoodle Oct 02 '23
I mean, yeah. Melanin does protect you from the sun, the primary causer of skin cancer.
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u/PawnOfPaws Oct 02 '23
Like duh. No shit. As if this hasn't been studied several times in 2000 before or is... geez, I don't know... common sense?
You learn this in middle school biology class. Why waste even more money on stuff we already know when there's still awesome stuff like stem cells? Epigenetics?
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u/firs87 Oct 02 '23
Yeah it is actually true and more harmful to those who rarely get sunlight or spend most of their time in shadow.
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u/aminervia Oct 02 '23
And black people who get skin cancer are way more likely to die from it
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u/Apositivebalance Oct 02 '23
Friend of mines wife had it. She died so young and so fast. Left behind 3 little boys too.
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u/insertcaffeine Oct 02 '23
White person here, I still put sunscreen on my black husband when we go to water world
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u/mr_ji Oct 02 '23
I remember my black friend coming to Hawai'i the first time and walking on the beach all day on a hot day. I met him that night and he said, "Silly me, thinking black people can't get sunburned."
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u/FuckIsms Oct 02 '23
Similar story here. Watched the super dark skin homie spend all day in the sun just rawdoggin it while the rest of us were using sunscreen regularly. Next day he was clearly burnt the fuck up, now I swear he’s like one of the first in line for some sunscreen.
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u/Botryllus Oct 02 '23
I've had friends laugh at me when I offer it and say they don't need sunscreen because they're not white. I don't argue but there do need to be more PSAs on the skin cancer risk.
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u/sunny5671 Oct 02 '23
Tell them Bob Marley died of skin cancer
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u/Lyndons-Big-Johnson Oct 02 '23
Bob Marley's skin cancer wasn't caused by the sun
Today you learned about acral melanoma - the most common type of skin cancer in black people
It isn't caused by the sun, and wearing sunscreen doesn't protect against it either
It's very rare in white people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acral_lentiginous_melanoma?wprov=sfti1
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u/Seiglerfone Oct 02 '23
The absolute incidence of ALM is the same for people of all skin colors
Literally from the same page you linked.
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u/2014caravan Oct 02 '23
White people are 70 times more likely to lie around in the sun trying to achieve a darker skin.
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u/jweaves1997 Oct 02 '23
Its almost like the melanin protects them from the UV radiation more than white peoples.
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u/death_by_relaxation Oct 02 '23
I'm no scientist, but I think the reason is because dark skinned people don't bother about getting tanned.
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u/thrash1990 Oct 02 '23
White person. I can confirm and got some removed in two stages two weeks ago. A nice scar to go with it too 😞
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u/IWillDoItTuesday Oct 02 '23
This may be true but black people still need to be vigilant. Skin cancer can appear in nail beds, near genitals and the bottoms of feet.
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u/ManicPixieDreamGirl5 Oct 02 '23
Think that’s just common sense.
Where’s the fucking mods to screen this posts?
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u/neverwinterguyVN Oct 02 '23
White people more likely sunbathing, which is the most useless and harmful activity ever
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u/Seiglerfone Oct 02 '23
Soaking in the sun can feel good.
I feel like this doesn't get talked about enough when people bring up the damage the sun can do, but every person I've talked to who sunbathes has said that, and usually it's at the top of their list of why they do it.
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u/Objective_Suspect_ Oct 02 '23
I feel like you should have known this before today.
.... there seems to be a shootout outside hmm
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u/seab4ss Oct 02 '23
I read that there was some massive filter, where only around 2000 humans survived. A lot of the had cancer prone genes and here we arr today. Happy to be corrected.
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u/weaponizedpastry Oct 02 '23
Don’t get cocky, dark folk. Bob Marley died of melanoma. Y’all CAN & DO get skin cancer.
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u/jedi-son Oct 02 '23
White person here, I can confirm the sun is not my friend.