Healthy Skincare

Learn some tips for protecting yourself from the sun

Hi, I am Lucy Danziger, the Editor-in-Chief of SELF Magazine and I am here to talk to you about skin health and being sun smart all summer long. SELF Magazine has partnered with Neutrogena to bring you the latest information you need to be skin smart and sun healthy. So, the most important thing to know is that every single day, you've got to wear sunscreen, because it's that incidental sun exposure that adds up over a lifetime and that's where our skin damages and ultimately skin cancer can come in. So, SELF wants you to wear a broad spectrum sunscreen. And choose one that you'll really want to apply. The old formulations are gloppy and heavy and suffocating feeling and they clog your pores. Nowadays, there is a whole new type of formulation that is sheer and it's a dry touch, it goes on much more easily and the one that we like is Neutrogena, because it's a broad spectrum, it has Helioplex and it goes up to 100 SPF, which is a whole new level of protection. The most important thing to do is wear enough of it. In the lab, SPFs are tested with a very thick coat. So you should really slather it on and the thing to think about is that a shotglass is an ounce, that's how much you need to cover your whole body and if you are not using that much, you could be getting as little as a one-tenth of the SPF that's on the label. So, really use enough, apply it generously and reapply. For a lot of women, they worry about putting an SPF on their face, that it might cause a breakout, but the truth is you can get SPF right in your makeup and I happen to like one that's sheer, Neutrogena makes a product that's called the Mineral Sheer Concealer Kit that has an SPF of 20. What that does is it covers up anything that you want to cover up on your face and provides a sun protection. So, one of the things that you have to do is figure out what are you going to wear, what feels good to you and wear it everyday, because it's that cumulative damage that's going to cause sun damage and skin cancer over time. The other thing self.com is offering is eCards. You can send a cute, funny reminder to your friends to wear SPF. You won't age, you won't get skin cancer and it's all good. And you can sign up for a text message of your own to get from SELF. And Harvard found in a study, that of all the people who are getting these text messages, you are 56% more likely to apply it than if you didn't get that text message. So, we want to help women be sun safe by sending out these text messages from self.com. Now, the third part of it is to do a molecheck. You can do a self-exam and you can get a free molecheck from a dermatologist throughout the months of June and July and to find out where these doctors are, you can go to neutrogenaskinhealth.com where they have a list of doctors who are going to give a free molecheck, because one in 80 moles turns out to be cancerous and doctors will tell you, if you find it early, skin cancer is 99% curable. So, you have to be careful in the sun, especially if someone in your family has had skin cancer. You can have 50% more elevated risk than the rest of the population, if someone in your immediate family members has had a skin cancer detected and diagnosed. So be sun smart, be skin healthy, do your self-exams and go to self.com to find out all the ways to be healthy in the sun, this summer.