Get sun smart this summer, and your skin will thank you decades later. Here is a bit of news that you will find hard to believe but is true: 90 per cent of the things that depress you when you why do orthopedic surgeons hate podiatrists look in the mirror are caused not by age but by ultraviolet light-creases, blotches, little white sports, thickening, sagging, wrinkling, and swallowing.
Years of sun exposure can devastate and dramatically age even the finest and healthiest of skins. Fair skin gets parchment-thin with freckling, dilated broken capillaries, age sports, and rough, red patches. Those with brown skins have a decade’s grace before they stat wrinkling, but even they don’t get by unscathed, dark skin becomes coarse-looking with deep furrows. The sun’s cancer-causing UV-B rays are, for the most part, blocked by the ample stores of melanin in dark skin. But the longer UA-V rays, which may not directly, promote cancer but do cause wrinkling, penetrate to the dermis regardless of skin color.
How, then, can you prepare your skin to weather the season and avoid long term damage? The answer is quite simple: Choose a good sunscreen (it is the only over-the-counter product that truly helps prevent premature wrinkles! ), and take steps to block out the sun. Here is how you begin.
Toss out your old sunscreen. Most people start thinking about sunscreens only when they begin to feel the heat of the harsh summer sun. But make no mistake: you need sunscreen throughout the year, more especially in a country like India where the sun reigns high no matter what the season. So, if your cabinets are harboring relics from last summer-half-empty bottles of outmoded, decomposing sunscreens, check the expiration date, and dump any that sells odd, looks curdled, or has separated,