How Sun Affects your Skin

August 21, 2017 by Mary – 93 Comments

If a few years ago suntan was a must during summer and was considered sexy, these days more and more studies talk about how sun exposure could damage your skin. As time goes by and you get older, you start noticing more and more brown marks and wrinkles on your skin. What you are seeing is the effect of previous sun exposure.

Did you know?

Protecting your skin from sun exposure will usually make you look 10 years younger than women who don’t take any measure against sun damage!

For many years we associated glowing complexion with good health, but skin colour that is obtained from being in the sun or in a tanning booth, actually accelerate the effects of ageing on your skin. In time, the sun’s ultraviolet light (UV) damages the fibres in the skin called elastin. That’s why the skin begins to sag, to stretch and loses its ability to go back into place after stretching. This happens in years, and the effects from sun exposure will start appearing later in your life.

The skin comes into contact with different amounts of UV light depending the time of the day, season, altitude or geographical location.

Here are some other facts that you probably didn’t know:

Over 90% of UV can penetrate light cloud so a cloudy day without protection is almost similar to a sunny day
60% of UV is received between 10 AM and 2 PM
Shade can reduce UV up to 50%
Clean snow reflects up to 80% of sunburning UV. This means that even in winter or when visiting mountains you must use protection
Sand reflects up to 25% of UV
The majority of sunlight impact on the skin is caused by UVB and UVA rays. While UVB rays fluctuate during the day and are more intense at noon, UVA rays are present throughout the day. UVB rays are responsible for sunburn, direct DNA damage and skin cancer. UVA rays cause premature ageing, sun allergy (that affects more than 20% of West Europe and North America population), indirect DNA damage and genetic mutations (melanoma).

Sun exposure is not entirely bad, only if not using proper protection. Sunlight can elevate mood, produces vitamin D that is responsible for many vital processes in our organism and keeps our bones healthy.

Back to premature skin ageing, sun damage is cumulative and begins at an early age. Premature skin ageing usually manifests as freckles, age spots (also known as liver spots), spider veins, rough and leathery skin, fine wrinkles that disappear when stretched.

As you probably know, the most affected body parts are your face and chest area. What is to be done to prevent premature skin ageing, especially if you did not know how sun exposure can affect your skin?

Use sunscreen daily

Some things you need to know about Sun Protective Factor or SPF: measures the ability of sunscreen to delay (not prevent) sunburn, which is an indication of injury to the living cells beneath the skin's surface. SPF 30 means that it takes 30 times longer to burn with sunscreen than without. A higher SPF offers a superior protection. Use sunscreens with SPF 30 for daily use, even if going out to the grocery store, and sunscreens with SPF 50 for more intense sun exposure, like going to the beach. Both adults and children need protection.

Use Body Lotion and Body Moisturizer

Use body lotion and moisturizers to keep your skin hydrated. If you leave your skin dry all the time, your skin will look wrinkly and saggy.

Treat your hands and chest area like your face

Women usually take great care of their face, but most of the times neglect decollete and neck area. Treat your neck and the backs of your hands as you would your face by generously applying moisturizer and sunscreen.

Drink plenty of water and Eat Healthy

A well-maintained fluidity can make your skin moisturized and will help avoid dryness. So you don’t only need to use water externally, you also need it internally to stay young and fresh. Also, you are what you eat, is what they always say. If you eat too much junk, you can expect that your overall appearance may seem like junk as well, no offence.

If wrinkles are already visible on your chest area, use our Chest Smoothing Pad

As mentioned before, fine wrinkles can be corrected if you stretch the skin. Our Blumbody cleavage pad does exactly that. Applying it each night, the pad improves irregular collagen structure and creates an increased blood flow in the area. This results in an improved skin tone and also prevents new wrinkles formation.

Even with perfect sunscreen use, wrinkles can't be prevented completely. Some wrinkling is hereditary, and a certain amount of wrinkles are natural to ageing.

Besides preventing sun damage, other habits can age skin prematurely. Slow the ageing process by eliminating these. You can read all about it in our next article.