Dermatologist Nikki Sullivan shares the options for sunscreen to protect your skin from the sun. Sunscreen can help lower the risk of skin cancer, especially during the summer.
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00:00Many will be heading outdoors hopefully enjoying some of that sun and during the peak summer
00:04months activities like sun activities are very important and sunscreen essential.
00:10Here are some of the sun safety tips that we are talking about with Dr. Nikki Sullivan of
00:14the Mayo Clinic. Thank you for joining us this morning. Thank you for having me.
00:19Well Dr. Sullivan, you're a dermatologist, so what should we know about protecting our skin
00:23from the sun? So it's important to know that everyone regardless of their age, their their
00:29skin type, their gender, everybody needs to use adequate sun protection and there's lots of great
00:33ways to protect your skin from the sun. Seeking shade is obviously number one. Wearing sun
00:38protective clothing like long sleeve shirts when you're able to, wide-brimmed hats, things like
00:43that. Also sun protective, UV protective sunglasses are also really important. On your exposed skin
00:50it's really important to be wearing sunscreen of SPF 30 or higher with frequent applications
00:55about every 90 minutes and something that's water resistant. As a big sunscreen fan myself,
01:01what is the difference between the mineral sunscreen and the chemical sunscreen? Are there
01:05any concerns we should factor in with uses of these? So the sunscreen we recommend is the
01:11sunscreen you will use most often. So whatever feels the best to you, looks the best to you,
01:15is tolerable from your wallet. That's the sunscreen that you should use. The difference
01:20between a physical sunscreen and a chemical sunscreen has to do with the active ingredients
01:25in the sunscreen. So if you flip over your sunscreen bottle and look over the active
01:28ingredient label, you'll see the titanium dioxide or zinc oxide as an active ingredient. If your
01:34sunscreen says one of those two things, it's a mineral-based or physical sunscreen. If it says
01:39something different, then that's a chemical sunscreen. Both of those types of sunscreens
01:44work by helping to absorb the UV light on the surface of the skin and physical sunscreens also
01:49dissipate the UV light by reflection or by kind of bouncing it off the skin, whereas chemical
01:54sunscreens just sort of absorb the light and transfer it to heat. In about 10 seconds, can
01:59you tell us what we should think about for picking sunscreen for kids? So kids less than six months
02:05old really should just be completely out of the sun. If you're going to put sunscreen on them,
02:09it should be a mineral-based or physical sunscreen. Otherwise, parents really like
02:13the spray sunscreen. In that case, you should use it all for their body.