Hello everyone! Today I want to speak about sun protection. Now, when summer is officially here, I think that we should enjoy as much as we can being outside in a walk or a picnic with friends, but we should also think about our skin. It is the only one that we have so it needs to last. Also skin is the biggest organ in our body. I know that we all love sun, bronzed skin and taking as much as possible of that famous vitamin D, but sun is not so naive anymore and there are a few things that we should know before we go sunbathing.
Did you know that around 80% of all signs of aging are caused by sun damage on the skin? Here I am not talking about redness, sunburn, etc. I am talking about collagen damage in deep layers of the skin, sun spots, which many people call age spots, wrinkles, dryness, etc. So EVERYBODY should use a sun protective cream. Not only if you are pale and sensitive, but also if you have dark or olive skin, the thing that you are not getting sunburn doesn’t mean that your skin is not being damaged by sun and in a process of advanced aging.
So, sun protective creams and lotions are different in a sense of height of protective factor, waterproof abilities and photo stability. Also intensity of ultra violet rays depends of the time of the year, time during the day, pollution, clouds, etc. We have UVB and UVA rays. UVB rays make around 5% of sun rays and they are causing redness, burns, upper layer skin damage and skin cancer. UVA rays are making 95% of sun rays they are penetrating deep into the skin and causing permanent damage, allergic reactions, pigmentations and premature aging. While UVB rays are having current effect on the skin, UVA rays are making cumulative damage. To be protected from UVA rays we should use sun protection every day during entire year even when it is completely cloudy because these rays are still there.
We have two types of sun protective filters in creams and lotions: physical and chemical. Physical filters like zincoxide and titanium dioxide are acting like mirrors on skin surface and they are sending back those rays. Chemical filters are taking UV rays and they are neutralizing them in the skin before they make any damage. When you use products that contain chemical filters you need to apply them 20 minutes before sun exposure. And be aware that we should re-apply sun protection every two hours even if we use spf 50! If on the packaging of sun cream it says that it is mineral, that means that it contains physical filters. Mineral sun protection you can apply just before sun exposure. And to help our skin from the inside to be safer under the sun we can also take pills that contain extract of the plant Leucotomas polypodium. I will share with you photos of my favorite sun protective creams and I hope that all of you will have nice holiday and enjoy seaside time with protection. Since I am phototype 1 my protective factor is always 50!
