A Board Certified Plastic Surgeon in Scottsdale
Posts tagged sunscreen
Sunscreen Rankings for the Summer.
01 year ago
Scottsdale -With Memorial Day just pass us, we are realizing that summer is really here! In Arizona, we know the heat and the sun is coming back to full force. To protect your skin this summer I did a little research on which sunscreen might be best. Fortunately, Consumer Reports has ranked sunscreen for us and here is a summary:
The 4 top ranked — all sprays — are Up & Up Sport Continuous (Target); Walgreens Sport Continuous; Banana Boat Sport Performance Continuous and Aveeno Continuous Protection. All four tied in their overall score. Consumer Reports ranked those with the same scores by cost per ounce and emphasizes that “sunscreens that guard against ultraviolet A and ultraviolet B radiation can help prevent sunburn, wrinkles, and certain skin cancers.”
For the actual tests, CR looked at “how well each product blocked UVA and UVB rays and how well their claimed sun-protection factor, or SPF — a measure of UVB protection — lasted on volunteers who soaked in water for 40 or 80 minutes.” The top four sunscreens each “provided very good UVA protection and excellent UVB protection, and met their SPF claim even after treated skin was in water for 80 minutes,” CR said.
Sunscreen is an important aspect of all summer vacations and we recommend anyone of the top 4 sunscreen outlined above.
Don't forget high SPF at higher altitudes…
01 year ago
by Dr. Aldo
in In the news
Scottsdale – As if living in the desert was not enough… apparently, going to higher ground increases sun damage to your skin. Reuters news story shows higher SPF 70+ formulation was very effective in protecting skin from sunburns under extreme ultraviolet light and sporting conditions. In the study, 43 golfers playing for an average of 4.5 hours each applied the sunscreen themselves. Twenty-one golfers applied the SPF 70+ sport sunscreen over the entire face before they went out to play golf. The sunscreen was reapplied again about half way through their golf game.
Dr. Darrell Rigel from New York University Medical Center presented his findings at the 68th annual meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology.
“You have to be extra careful at protecting yourself at high altitudes,” Rigel told Reuters Health. “People don’t realize how much additional sun you get at higher altitudes. It’s anywhere from an 8 percent to a 10 percent increase for every thousand feet of elevation. In the summertime, you can get anywhere from 40 percent to 50 percent greater sun intensity than at sea level.”
Dr. Rigel reported that golfers who started out with the SPF 70+ sunscreen on their entire face and then reapplied it to half the face two hours later had no skin reddening at the end of the 4.5 hours, and none of the golfers who used the SPF 70 formulation complained of sunburn. In comparison, 7 of 22 golfers who applied SPF 15 to half the face had noticeable skin reddening on that side.
In a study published last month in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, Rigel and his colleagues reported similar results with ski instructors in Vail, who applied two different sunscreens – one with an SPF of 50 and the other with an SPF of 85 – to different sides of their face. The SPF 50 sunscreen was not enough to protect them from sunburn.
“They put the sunscreen on in the morning, before they went out and skied an average of 5 hours a day and when we evaluated them the next morning, the ones who used the SPF 50 formulation were burned,” he said.
The moral of the study here is that higher SPF formulations tend to protect you better at higher elevations, lasts longer and is more effective at preventing sunburns.
