I went to the pool last week with my kids and right before they dove in the water,  I made sure I layered them up with sunscreen. Yes! SUNSCREEN! We as black people have been brought up to think that we don’t need it but indeed WE DO. UVA/UVB rays do not discriminate and they are harmful if you are not protected. We all can get skin cancer and even SUN BURN!

Peeling Sun Burn. Photo Credit essential-magazine.com

Even though African Americans have better protection from the sun’s harmful rays than white people, we still need to protect our skin with sunscreen. The first step is to pick sunscreen with the right SPF protection. SPF (Sun Protection Factor) 15 or higher is best. The number in front of the SPF means how long it will take you to  burn in the sun.

The average person burns with 10-15 mins of direct sun exposure. With a SPF 15 you wouldn’t start to burn until 150 mins ( 2 1/2 hours) or with a SPF 30( that’s what I use) you wouldn’t start to burn until 300 mins ( 5 hours).

Sunburn is vicious! Its red, warm/hot and painful to the touch. The skin can also have small fluid filled blisters with a lot of swelling. There are a lot of home remedies out there to ease the symptoms of sunburn but it ususally takes several days or weeks to completely heal.

Protect your beautiful brown, olive, caramel skin use sunscreen every time you go out, sunburn is not cute! 

Bri*

Photo: malik_ml_williams/flickr.com

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