Tan Lines: How to Protect Yourself from the Sun When you Won’t or Can’t say no to the Outdoors
Diana Clarke
Eric Black is an outdoors enthusiast. He enjoys taking bike trips around the Bay Area, running around Lake Merced, and surfing. Sometimes, he travels to Los Angeles, Hawaii, New York, Baja and as far as Costa Rica in search of epic waves. But when waves aren’t flat, he is content to surf in San Francisco, where he was born and raised.
He has spent hours searching the Internet for reliable information on sunscreen products because surfing means spending hours in direct sunlight.
Granted San Francisco is often cloudy, yet up to 80% of UV radiation can penetrate thin clouds, says Michael Martin, M. D., MPH, who is on the faculty at UCSF and sees patients at San Francisco General Hospital.
Ideally, a surfer needs a sunscreen that is waterproof. Yet no sunscreen is totally waterproof, says Cindy Yag Howard, M.D., a dermatologist in Naples, Florida and a Skin Cancer Foundation spokesperson. And the sun degrades sunscreen; it needs to be applied every two hours. “What’s more, if you sweat or swim, you need to reapply it every hour, “ says Dr. Yag Howard.
Tell Eric he needs to reapply sunscreen and how does he respond?
“When I’m having fun, I’m not coming out of the water to apply sunscreen. And I
don’t want to wait the 20 or 30 minutes for the sunscreen to bond to my skin. It
takes time and energy to come back to shore, reapply the sunscreen and fight my
way back out."
To check if a sunscreen is effective when he’s in the water, he looks for a tan
line where the wetsuit covers his skin to his wrist verses his hands, his skin
exposed to the sun. If his eyes sting, he knows the sunscreen isn’t staying on.
Eric isn’t alone. Other athletes and those who spend time outdoors, be it work or play, face a similar predicament—how to protect their skin from the sun.
In Dr. Martin’s 1993 book, How to Outsmart the Sun, he wrote, “My deepest tan, and no doubt a significant portion of my current skin damage, was acquired during a summer when I had daily swimming practice from 7:30 and 9:30 A.M. Fortunately, I swam freestyle and most of the exposure was to my back.”
As a matter of fact, 90 % of premature aging to the skin of Caucasians is from sun exposure, says Dr. Martin.
“This concept is hard for people to appreciate because it happens slowly,” says Dr. Martin.
“If you look at someone who is 16 and compare their skin to someone who is 60, most of the aging is from sun exposure. You can also compare skin that has been exposed to the sun and never exposed. The unexposed skin under clothing appears 20 or 30 years younger.”
In contrast, dark skin filters sunlight better than white skin. “It is as though dark skin were covered with clothing,” says Dr. Martin.
He recommends a 3-step approach to sun protection.
1. wear a broad spectrum sunscreen that protects against UVA and UVB radiation because most people don’t cover up all their skin, particularly their face and hands.
2. cover up as much of the body as possible and wear a wide- brimmed hat and sunglasses that block out UV rays. And seek shade under a parasol or canopy to shield yourself from the sun.
3. avoid the sun, particularly at midday when sunlight is the most intense.
“This three-step approach is very effective and beneficial in the vast majority of cases. Each factor backs up the other,” says Dr. Martin. “You can’t say sunscreen is all you need, avoiding the sun is all you need, or clothing is all you need.”
A surfer, for instance, could go surfing early in the morning or late in the day and wear a good broad-spectrum water resistant sunscreen to cover hands and face.
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Last modified: 06/23/07
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