Should Vitiligo Patients Take Sunlight or Not?

Human skin color is constantly affected by the external environment, seasonal changes, and other factors in our daily life, with sunlight being the main factor. So whenever summer comes, some outdoor workers' skin color will gradually deepen, and people who engaged in agriculture, fisheries, land prospecting, and other outdoor works, would have much darker skin color than the average person.

Why can Ultraviolet light (UV) light make the skin color deepen? In the process of melanin metabolism, ultraviolet light can stimulate the activity of tyrosinase, an enzyme necessary for melanin synthesis, and accelerate the transformation of tyrosine into dopa and dopaquinone, which promotes melanin metabolism. While ultraviolet light can accelerate the transformation of melanin from melanocytes to the epidermis of various skin layers so that the skin color would deepen, which is good for the treatment of vitiligo.

But the actual situation is dialectic: vitiligo patients could take sunlight, but they need to be moderate in this activity, and avoid excessive sun exposure in the hot summer.

And if patients are excessively exposed to the sun for a long time, it may bring bad results for their condition. Especially in summer, due to the strong UV rays, it is easy to cause burns and inflammation on the skin, especially in exposed areas such as the head and face, which often leads to damage to melanocytes and loss of the ability to produce melanin. For the skin area of white patches where melanocytes are reduced, means the ability to resist ultraviolet light will be weakened, and after a long time of strong exposure, the white patches are easy to blister, and the skin would peel, making the condition worse.

In addition, when the function of our body organs is normal, tyrosinase activity is also normal, such as the skin of healthy people, sun exposure will darker the skin color. And if tyrosinase activity is reduced or lost, the exposure to strong sunlight can still lead to faster metabolism of melanocytes, it needs more nutrients which cannot be provided due to the insufficient level of tyrosinase, and hence cause the expansion of the white patches.

However, vitiligo patients should not completely avoid sunlight, if the patient is taking vitiligo medicine, moderate sunlight also has a certain effect on vitiligo disease recovery. In addition, patients’ sunlight taking time should adjust with the season, such as autumn, winter, and early spring, they could take some longer sunlight. In late spring and summer, sunlight should be taken in the morning and evening. This can reduce the skin damage caused by strong sunlight exposure, beneficial to the bring more effect of long-wave ultraviolet rays in sunlight, and assist in the treatment of vitiligo.