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Author: Kim Hartleybr
Source: ezinearticles.combr
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Theres more than a ray of hope for your complexion. No matter what your age, you can help prevent further sun damage by using a strong sunscreen lotions, gels, creams and oils formulated to absorb sunlight so your skin doesnt. You might even opt for a sun block, which protects your skin even more. On the other hand, its important to understand what sunscreens and sun blocks cant do.
A sunscreens SPF, or sun protection factor, represents a multiple of the time you can stay in the sun without burning. If you burn within 15 minutes of being exposed to the sun with no protection, for example, wearing a sunscreen with SPF 15 would theoretically allow you to stay in the sin for 225 minutes (31/2 hours) before you started to burn.
But sunscreens dont make sunning safe, because sunscreen alone wont keep the sun from aging your skin. You can still get sun-damaged even if you use a good sunscreen.
The trouble is, the sun penetrates your skin through even the strongest sunscreens. Its simply a matter of time. You can spend a week in Florida, use a SPF 15 product and not show much of a tan. But stay there three or four weeks and youll tan quite a bit.
In other words, while sunscreens can help keep you from burning, they only delay tanning-a slower form of sun damage. Whats more, sun damage is cumulative: Lines, rough skin texture and blotches wont show up on your face for years.
Fortunately, the word is out that tanned skin is sun-damaged skin. Youll get fewer wrinkles and blotches if you use a sunscreen. Thats why sun protection products fly off the shelves, moisturizers with added sunscreen sell like hotcakes and women of all ages are sporting pale faces in August.
And dont fall prey to the fallacy that dark skin is more immune to sun damage. Even African Americans, whose skin contains more melanin (the substance that gives its pigment and also causes it to tan), can get sun damage. For that matter, so can people of Mediterranean ancestry and others with moderate degrees of pigmentation.
Many people, especially those of Northern Europe ancestry, shouldnt depend entirely on sunscreens if theyre working outdoors or otherwise spending a lot of time in the sun.
While no sunscreen can offer you complete protection, there is reason to believe that slathering on a strong sunscreen regularly may help prevent skin cancer.
Using sunscreen doesnt seem to lead to a deficiency in vitamin D, which your body produces when its exposed to sunlight.
Your baking in the sun and feeling virtuous: Youre slathered with a sunscreen whose label sports a double digit SPF number. Good for you, right?-except that your sunscreen may be filtering out only a fraction of the suns damaging rays.
Youre exposed to two kinds of ultraviolet light: ultraviolet-B (UVB), the so-called burning rays, which are more prevalent in summer and strongest at midday, and ultraviolet-A (UVA), which arent as strong as UVB but reach the earth year round and in greater amounts. At one time, experts thought only UVB caused skin cancer and photoaging. It now appears that UVA can lead to both of these skin villains, just more slowly than UVB and UVA.
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