With summer fast approaching everyone is gearing up to enjoy the outdoors. While winter offers it’s share of outdoor activities, those options really open up once the weather gets warmer. From going out hiking, golfing, swimming, or anything else odds are that if you are a physically active person, you will be spending a lot of time outside during summer.
Since you will be spending so much time outside, you need to keep an eye out and make sure to protect your skin from the harmful UV rays of the sun. Knowing about Sunscreen and SPF details will help you better understand how to choose what type of sunscreen to use to ensure maximum protection.
We all know that sunscreen protects us from getting burnt, but it plays a much bigger role than just that. Sunscreen can help prevent skin cancer and aging as well. The sun gives off a lot of different things, but the ones you need to be wary of are UV radiation. Ultraviolet B radiation (UVB) is what sunscreen is primarily meant to guard against.
UVB is one of the things that can cause skin cancer as well as that nasty sunburn. UVA is another form of ultraviolet radiation that sunscreens also work to guard against. UVA ages your skin by giving it wrinkles and sunspots, as well as contributing to skin cancer similarly to UVB radiation.
Now you might be wondering about the Sunscreen and SPF details so that you can be better informed. Well first off, SPF stands for Sun Protection Factor. SPF is basically how much UVB radiation is being blocked, so the higher the SPF, the more UVB is being blocked. SPF does not actually have anything to do with UVA.
For example, if you bought a sunscreen with SPF 80, it will mean you need to be exposed to 80 times as much UVB to get burned. But that does not necessarily mean it does anything to stop UVA. Most modern sunscreens will block UVA as well as UVB, and ironically enough the more they block UVA, the higher the SPF tends to be. So while SPF is not how much UVA is being blocked, the very act of increasing UVA defense can cause UVB defense to go up as well.
While most people can use sunscreens without an issue, there are those rare few that find themselves with a reaction to sunscreen. You might find yourself getting a rash every time you put some on. This does not necessarily mean you are allergic to sunscreen in general, but a specific chemical in that specific sunscreen.
If you are having that problem, you should look into the Sunscreen and SPF details and try other brands with different ingredients until you can find one that does not cause such a reaction. Looking to organic alternatives is a good choice as well since more often than not you will not be allergic to the compounds used in them.
Skin cancer is a big issue, and sunburns can ruin your fun for several days. Make sure you look around and get the best sunscreen possible so that you can enjoy every minute this summer.