Drop Dead Healthy by A. Jacobs (books to read to increase intelligence .TXT) 📕

to get sunburned as it allows in more UV light. And God knows what other unforeseen side effects will bubble up over the years. Not to mention that it’s a money vacuum.

So on a random Wednesday, I put the Retin-A in the back of my closet. Though maybe I’ll start up again for the book tour. You know, for business purposes.

The Bronze Age

When I was a kid, sunscreen rarely touched my body. I loved a good tan, which I somehow thought made me look less scrawny. As a result, my skin is a canvas of craters and crow’s-feet and splotches.

I was kindly reminded of this on a recent vacation. We met a fellow tourist who remarked that Julie and I looked young. We smiled. Until her husband, a dermatologist, replied:

“No, they don’t. I can see a lot of skin damage. A huge amount.”

He guessed, correctly, that we were in our forties. Julie still hasn’t forgiven him. “Unless you work at a carnival, keep your age guesses to yourself,” she said.

But he’s right about our skin damage.

And for this, I’ve decided to blame Coco Chanel. In researching suntans, I found out the French designer is considered the godmother of modern bronzing. For centuries, middle-class white people avoided tans for fear of looking like they worked in the field like a common peasant. But in 1923, Coco Chanel vacationed in the Mediterranean on the yacht of an aristocrat friend, and was spotted on board with a deep tan. Caramel-colored skin soon became the rage, the sign that you could afford a sun-drenched holiday.

After learning this story, I added Coco Chanel to my list of the top-five health villains. Think of how many cases of fatal skin cancer this woman is responsible for. Thousands? Millions? Maybe that’s too harsh. Maybe I shouldn’t be angry at this delightfully chic lady, the creator of plumed hats and Marilyn Monroe’s nighttime wear (“five drops of Chanel No. 5”). Maybe we shouldn’t fault her and her alone. Maybe. But in my defense, Coco Chanel had some other rather serious flaws. She had a notorious years-long affair with a Nazi spy during the occupation, and was later charged by the French government as a collaborator. (She escaped trial only thanks to intervention by her friends in the British royal family.) Which makes her life especially ironic—she was involved with two opposed evils: white supremacy and tanning.

Coco Chanel needed more sunscreen. A lot more. As do most of us. When Americans put on sunscreen, we underapply the stuff, using about a quarter to half of the correct amount, say dermatologists.

The American Academy of Dermatology suggests a shot-glass-ful of sunscreen every two to four hours. You should apply it regardless of the weather—whether it’s cloudy (80 percent of UV rays penetrate clouds) or winter (especially with snow, which reflects sunlight).

So, on a Saturday morning, before walking our kids to a friend’s birthday party, I squeezed my Coppertone Sport Broad Spectrum UVA/UVB sunscreen (plus antioxidant defense) until it filled a shot glass, and then dipped my finger in and started slathering it on my body.

A shot glass is about 1 to 1.5 ounces. It’s hard to comprehend just how much sunscreen this is unless you try it yourself. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Still waiting. You see? You’re probably exhausted from squeezing the sunscreen tube, right?

With my shot glass, I had enough sunscreen to coat my body four times. I glistened like a Mr. Universe contestant, only without the distracting abs.

“I’ve run out of body parts,” Julie said, when she tried to do it. “And I think I got it in my mouth. The dermatologists have to be getting kickbacks from the sunscreen companies.”

Applying it every two hours, Julie and I emptied an entire eight-ounce bottle in a single day. We finished more than half of another bottle for the boys.

When I tell my aunt Marti, she’s appalled. She thinks sunscreen is filled with toxins. I’m avoiding scented sunscreens, which might have phthalates, but otherwise, I’m ignoring the risk. Sorry, Marti, again.

Some vitamin-D advocates are also skeptical of sunscreen. For the last few months, D has been the trendiest of all vitamins, the Lady Gaga of supplements (or whichever pop star the bar mitzvah DJs are playing ad nauseam these days). Its fans—such as Dr. Sarfraz Zaidi, a professor of medicine at UCLA—say vitamin-D deficiency is linked to cancer, heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease, chronic fatigue, asthma, dental problems, and depression, among many, many other ills.

Not counting supplements, we get vitamin D from foods such as salmon and egg yolks, and from sun exposure, which lets us synthesize it ourselves. The D fans say that we use too much sunscreen and suppress our levels.

The quarrel between dermatologists and vitamin-D advocates is an example of a problem infecting all medicine: the specialty bias. Most experts see the world through the prism of their specialty.

Based on my advisory board’s counsel, I’m taking a middle path: exposing one sunscreen-free limb every other day for fifteen minutes. I vary the limb, to reduce the chances of overexposure to any particular part.

The Mole

Among my skin’s many imperfections: I have a mole on the side of my nose.

Had I been alive 250 years ago in France, this would have been quite a boon. I read in the encyclopedia that back in the days of Louis XV, there was a vogue for moles. Black patches of gummed taffeta were popular with chic women and men who wanted to emphasize the beauty and whiteness of their skin. The smart set had plenty of patch designs to choose from. For the understated, there were the simple spots. But the truly fashionable had patches in the shapes of stars, crescents, elaborate animals, insects, or figures. Placement was also important, seeing as these patches had their own language: A patch at the corner of the eye symbolized passion, while one at the middle of the forehead indicated dignity. Women carried their patch boxes with them, in case they wanted to slap