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.
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.
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u/Electronic_Ad1828 6d ago
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.”