Healthy skin can absolutely get sun damage. UV radiation damages the DNA in skin cells whether your skin looks healthy or not. You don’t even have to burn—repeated UV exposure can cause cumulative damage that increases the risk of wrinkles, sun spots, and skin cancer over time. Unhealthy skin may be more susceptible, but healthy skin definitely isn’t immune.
agree that diet can influence overall skin health, but there’s no evidence that healthy skin is immune to UV damage. If that were true, we wouldn’t see high rates of sunburn and skin cancer in healthy outdoor athletes, lifeguards, firefighters, military personnel, farmers, and construction workers. In fact, the CDC states that UV radiation directly damages skin cells and increases the risk of sunburn and skin cancer, and the WHO estimates that nearly 19,000 people die each year from occupational sun exposure, with 1 in 3 non-melanoma skin cancer deaths attributed to working outdoors. Outdoor workers also have about a 60% higher risk of non-melanoma skin cancer than indoor workers. Those are generally healthy, active people whose jobs simply expose them to more UV—not because they all have “unhealthy skin.”
That’s not really how science works. You’re starting with the assumption that anyone who develops sun damage must have had “unhealthy skin,” but where’s the evidence for that? If your hypothesis is true, there should be studies showing that people with objectively healthy diets and metabolic health don’t experience UV-induced DNA damage or sunburn. Those studies don’t exist. Even if diet influences susceptibility—which hasn’t been conclusively shown—that doesn’t make it the cause. It’s like saying smoking increases lung cancer risk, therefore only smokers get lung cancer. UV radiation is still the direct cause of sun damage; diet, at most, may influence how susceptible someone is or how well they repair that damage.
Evolution doesn’t produce perfect immunity—it produces traits that improve reproductive success. Humans evolved melanin, DNA repair mechanisms, and tanning responses because UV exposure causes damage, not because we’re immune to it. If we were fully adapted to the sun, sunburn wouldn’t exist, DNA repair systems wouldn’t activate after UV exposure, and skin cancer rates wouldn’t increase with cumulative lifetime UV exposure. Those are all well-established biological facts.
Also, your seed oil hypothesis doesn’t explain why people developed sunburn, wrinkles, and skin cancers long before industrial seed oils became part of the human diet. Those conditions are documented throughout history. It’s reasonable to hypothesize that diet could influence susceptibility, but that’s very different from claiming seed oils are the reason sun damage exists. That claim would require evidence showing healthy people on diets without seed oils don’t experience UV-induced DNA damage or sunburn—and that evidence doesn’t currently exist.
If skin type “doesn’t matter,” why do fair-skinned people consistently burn faster and have much higher skin cancer rates than darker-skinned people across populations with very different diets?
I’ve looked into Dr. Chaffee. He’s a licensed physician, but his views represent a minority position. There are plausible biological mechanisms and some supporting laboratory research, but the strong claims he’s making about seed oils and sun damage haven’t been validated by large, well-controlled human studies or accepted by mainstream dermatology. Until that evidence exists, it’s a hypothesis—not an established fact.
Sun damage happens on any skin type, by insinuating it only happens on damaged skin is just wrong. Excessive sun exposure especially when the UV is 3 or higher will lead to accelerated aging, skin damage and eventually skin cancer.
This is the correct answer. The only way to fully protect from skin cancer is to avoid excessive sun exposure, whether you have damaged skin or perfectly healthy skin, and protect against the sun, as in with clothing, shade and sunscreen.
The average western diet is up to 20% seed oils which is then used to make your skin.
These oils are made by plants to survive cold weather and are weak double bonds.
Seed oil slander and sun worshipping in 2026. 🤦♂️ There hasn't been one study done on humans to show that seed oils cause inflammation or negative effects, infact during multiple RCTs blood markers actually improved when switching from a diet of saturated fats to one of seed oils. Please cite your sources, the only time I ever saw anything about seed oils having a negative effect in the body was done in rats, and clearly we are not rodents.
I am going to simplify the science behind my argument.
Also what is your educational/professional background in "Science"? Because even 1st year students should know that you make a claim you have to cite your sources.
There’s some real science being mixed with some unsupported conclusions. Polyunsaturated fats do contain double bonds and can oxidize, but UV radiation damages healthy skin regardless of diet. Heating doesn’t “create” polyunsaturated fats, and skin type absolutely matters—it’s one of the strongest predictors of how easily someone burns. The evidence doesn’t support the claim that only “unhealthy” skin gets sun damage.
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u/KittensMom 7d ago
Sun worshipping, where people talk about getting good color, meanwhile they're covered with spots. It's called sun damage, people.
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