Catch-22

Damned if you do...

Only brief full-body exposures to bright summer sunshine — of 10 or 15 minutes a day — are needed to make high amounts of the vitamin. But most authorities, including Health Canada, have urged a total avoidance of strong sunlight or, alternatively, heavy use of sunscreen. Both recommendations will block almost all vitamin D synthesis.

Those studying the vitamin say the hide-from-sunlight advice has amounted to the health equivalent of a foolish poker trade. Anyone practising sun avoidance has traded the benefit of a reduced risk of skin cancer — which is easy to detect and treat and seldom fatal — for an increased risk of the scary, high-body-count cancers, such as breast, prostate and colon, that appear linked to vitamin D shortages.

That's right! Stay inside, get cancer. Go outside, get cancer. No matter what you do, you'll get cancer. Or you'll drown in the rising waters of global warming. Or you'll be incinerated by an asteroid. So spark up and pour yourself another one, because...

WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!1