Knowledge and attitudes to vitamin D and sun exposure in elite New Zealand athletes: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Background

Sun safety and vitamin D status are important for prolonged health. They are of particular interest to those working with athletes for whom for whom safe sun practices maybe limited.

The aim of this cross-sectional study was to describe the attitudes of elite New Zealand athletes to both vitamin D and sun exposure.

Methods

110 elite New Zealand outdoor athletes volunteered to participate in an interview with a trained interviewer. The interviewer asked the athletes questions on their Vitamin D knowledge, attitudes and practices regarding sun exposure as well as their concerns about skin cancer.

Results

Athletes were more concerned about their risk of skin cancer (66%) than their vitamin D status (6%). Although the majority (97%) were aware of Vitamin D and could identify the sun as a source (76%) only 17% could name another source of Vitamin D.

Only 10 (9%) reported always applying sunscreen before going out in the sun. No athlete reported reapplying sunscreen every hour and 25 suggesting that they never reapply sunscreen.

Conclusions

Athletes are concerned about skin cancer however, their use of sunscreen is not optimal suggesting reapplication of sunscreen could be targeted in order to reduce the risk of sun cancer. Awareness of sources of Vitamin D other than the sun may also need to be improved potentially through educational interventions and possibly in conjunction with sun smart messages.

Keywords:

• Sun exposure
• Cancer
• Vitamin D
• Athletes

Copyright comment

This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Copyright comment

This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Department of Human Nutrition, University of Otago, New Zealand. The authors have no competing interests.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Authors’ contributions

KEB was invloved with the study design, data collection and analysis, manuscript preparation and gave final approval to the manuscript. TDL was invloved with the study design, data analysis, manuscript preparation and gave final approval to the manuscript. DFB was invloved with the study design, data collection, manuscript preparation and gave final approval to the manuscript. PBH was invloved with the study design, data collection, manuscript preparation and gave final approval to the manuscript. ASE was invloved with the study design, manuscript preparation and gave final approval to the manuscript. NW was invloved with data collection and analysis, manuscript preparation and gave final approval to the manuscript. JH was invloved with statisical analysis, manuscript preparation and gave final approval to the manuscript.