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Sunshine is regularly blamed for causing fatal skin cancers, but it may help save your life if you develop a different cancer. It seems that sunlight has an overall protective effect as it stimulates the body’s production of vitamin D, which helps to combat internal cancers, including those of the colon and prostate.

“A little sun exposure is a little better for you than avoiding sunlight,” says Richard Setlow of Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, who co-led the new work. “Vitamin D doesn’t lower the incidence of internal cancers, but it prevents more people dying from them.”

“Vitamin D doesn’t lower the incidence…

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