Our country has made incredible efforts to contain Covid 19 and every one of us has made sacrifices to ensure the safety of our community. From handshakes to hugs, actions we took for granted have been eliminated for the greater good.
Here at Dermatology...
The One Mistake That is Aging You and Could Lead to Skin Cancer
“I read that there is no reason to use more than a SPF 30.” “I heard that spf 15 and spf 30 are virtually the same.” Variations of these comments come my way daily especially now as I preach sun protection for the summer. Yes, there is a study, which shows that WHEN APPLIED IN A CONTROLLED SETTING, there is very little difference between a SPF 15 and a SPF 30. What is a controlled setting? Paid attendants apply 2 milligrams of sunscreen to every square centimeter of exposed skin every 80 minutes. For the average adult, that is over an ounce of sunscreen every hour and a half. Most sunscreen bottle holds 8 ounces. So, if you are at the beach from 10 to 4, you alone should use a half bottle of sunscreen per day! A family of 4 would use almost 2 bottles in a day. That is 12 bottles for a week’s vacation. Studies show that most people apply between ¼ and ½ the recommended amount of sunscreen, which means a SPF 15 is really somewhere between a SPF 4 and SPF 8, a SPF 30 between an 8 and a 15. Few remember to reapply every 80 minutes and the longer between applications, the more the protection decreases, so that SPF 30 applied at 25% coverage is about a 4 after 3 hours. SPF 70-100 doesn’t cost much more than a 15 or a 30, but if you apply it as most do, it does quadruple your protection. So, do your skin a favor. Grab the highest number, apply a lot, and reapply every hour and a half. Even better, wear a SPF 50 swim shirt or rash guard and just use sunscreen on your hand, neck, face, ears and legs/feet. It is very cost effective. Enjoy.