Skin Care Products -- Sunscreen

Your name: Your e-mail address: Your friend's e-mail addresses:

(separate multiple addresses with comma)
Indicates required field
Message (limit 100 characters)
Enter answer below:

(Why the math? It protects against spam)
=
Send
Cancel
Your message has been successfully sent!

Short of staying out of the sun altogether, sunscreen is a person's next best defense against premature skin aging and skin cancer. People should use sunscreen any day that they'll be in the sun for a total of 20 minutes or more.

Sunscreens contain a variety of ingredients that either reflect, absorb, or scatter ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Sun protection factor (SPF) refers to a sunscreen's ability to protect a person's skin from some UV rays and gives a measure of how long it would take a person's skin to burn while wearing the product. Generally, the higher the SPF, the more a sunscreen protects from the sun, but this is based on individual sun sensitivity. For example, for an extremely fair skinned person who typically burns after only 5 minutes in the midday sun, a sunscreen with an SPF of 30 will increase the time it takes his or her skin to burn to 150 minutes (5 multiplied by 30).

However, this does not mean people should use sunscreen to increase the amount of time they spend in the sun. Even if a person's skin doesn't burn while in the sun, skin that is exposed to excessive amounts of sunlight is still experiencing sun damage.