Sunscreen Needs to be Your Best Friend

SPF! This is the stuff that looked white on your nose and your mom slathered all over you on beach days or days at the park. BUT, we were never really taught that this is the key anti aging ingredient.

Sunscreen is essential in keeping your youthful appearance and should be worn daily. I repeat, daily. Yes, right after your moisturizer, apply a sunscreen. The reason being that you’ll delay any sun damage from UVB and especially UVA damage. UVA are the rays that penetrate deeper into the skin and can create dark age spots and break down collagen creating wrinkles (photoaging). The key is prevention over correction.

If you spend all your days sunbathing and then end up with age spots, wrinkles, burns and leathery feeling skin, then it’s much harder, slower and more expensive to correct these with skincare, laser treatments and such. It’s much more efficient to just slather on that white stuff in your morning routine!

Finding the right sunscreen, especially a facial one can be a total pain and could discourage you- but there are products out there that will make you excited to wear sunscreen.

The two types are chemical and physical. Chemical sunscreen take in the UVA AND UVB and create a chemical reaction on the skin to cancel them out, protecting the skin. This is the stuff we are generally most familiar with. Physical sunscreens contain ingredients like zinc oxide that create a protective layer over the skin that simply block and bounce back those rays. This is my favourite option as I find it’s more gentle on the skin and if used properly, works like a charm.

Physical sunscreens can be a pain again, especially for darker skin tones, because of the white cast that zinc creates on the skin. There are so many brands out there that have now realized that adding a tint can neutralize this white and can even “perfect” your complexion by blurring spots, lines and evening your skin tone. Chemical sunscreens definitely can be found with a tint too! My favourite is this one from First Aid Beauty.

So applying your sunscreen daily is the key, but to further this protection and make sure it’s working, you need to reapply every two hours. I know this sounds grueling, but it’ll help. I love how some brands like TARTE, ColorScience and SuperGoop

have now come out with powders that can be swiped on overtop of your makeup. This is effortless and can even help touch up your gorgeous makeup. Another tip, is to wear it even if you’re indoors. 2020 has us indoors a significant amount more And sunscreen is still essential. The rays come through your windows and the blue light from your screens should be neutralized too. Sunscreen needs to be your best friend because it will help keep you so beautiful.

Much love,

Erin do