Hello fellow beauty lovers.
I believe we all have those people in our lives that begin every other sentence with: “I recently read that…”. These people live their lives according to what they’ve read and heard. And in all honesty, I believe we all have that little tick in us.
Now that the sun has been around regularly all of these myths about SPF and sun protection have been put out into the open again.
The most common thing these days is to say that: If you regularly wear SPF, you won’t be able to receive enough vitamin D from the sun. And that’s where so many opinions crash into each other. My friend firmly believes that we aren’t able to get enough vitamin D from our diet. I heard that a mere walk to your car secures your body the needed dose of vitamin D from the sun. Dr. Herbert Holman, dermatologist from California recently announced that we are in fact able to get our needed amount of this vitamin via the right diet especially if you include salmon and tuna into your daily food. It’s correct that we need UVB from the sun to amp up the vitamin D synthesis but it is said that we can get enough of UVB even when we wear SPF. So bottom line, there’s not one right answer to this.
If you’re darker to begin with, you don’t need SPF.Now this is something I believed growing up. As a kid I thought that given the fact that I was a tad darker than my Caucasian friends, I wouldn’t need to put on SPF and I never got sunburned. Today I realize that I’ve been really lucky because the fact is that every complexion can burn. Karyn Grossman, dermatologist from Santa Monica says that even though an Afro-American woman doesn’t need an SPF as high as for instance an Irish woman with red hair needs but the added Melanin is not nearly enough to protect your skin from cancer or premature skin aging.
A SPF higher than 30 is just a gimmick. I often heard that products with SPF of 50 or higher are not better than an SPF of 30. Howard Sobel, M.D. from Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City stated that an SPF of 90 can give you a 99% protection from the sun whilst an SPF of 30 provides you with a protection of 96%. Whilst the difference doesn’t seen massive, those few points can add up in the course of a whole life span.
With all those things in mind, we still need to consider that we’re drowned with information these days. Some people get it from their dermatologists and some get it from the newspaper, magazines etc. Even the stuff we hear at the doctors rarely match as doctors can have different opinions as well. I guess we’ll all find out who was in the right once we hit 50. Until then we’re left with what we have and what we personally believe in. But one thing is for sure: Sunbathing is something you should enjoy with great care and caution. Always try to protect yourself from the sun.
Lana Hoang
Image Rights: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_tanning, photo by Pedro Ribeiro Simoes
Copyright and Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/watch/nbcnews-com/three-myths-about-the-sun-and-sunscreens-312052291913, http://www.allure.com/beauty-trends/blogs/daily-beauty-reporter/2015/04/spf-myths.html, http://www.womenshealthmag.com/beauty/sunscreen-myths
