Choosing the best sunscreen to protect your skin
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.