{sweat} How to stay sun safe this summer!

Hello all,

What a scorcher it is today, and it's set to get a lot hotter tomorrow {yay for travelling to London with a huge suitcase!}. With this weeks heat wave and the summer upon us, I wanted to touch on sun safety as I've been doing a bit of research and I think that a lot of sun cream packaging can be misleading!

I've just come back from a sun filled lovely holiday {more on that next week} - and a topic of conversation that came up a few times was sun care. Everybody knows how important it is to wear sun screen, but not everybody knows how to choose a good one.

When you go into your local pharmacy and look at the vast range of sun care out there it can be pretty overwhelming. There are stars, there are SPF numbers and there are lotions, sprays & oils - but what do those stars mean, and whats best?

I took two types of sun protection with me on holiday. Hawaiian Tropic SPF15 Protective Dry Spray Oil and Boots Soltan SPF30 Protect & Go Suncare Lotion. I'll be 100% honest, with so much to choose from I pretty much went on what I'd used before, and on smell! I really like the coconut smell of Hawaiian Tropic so I picked that one for my body, and I chose the SPF30 for my face. They had 3*s and 5*s respectively which I figured meant they were pretty good.

I managed to burnt myself on the very last day which was the least fun, and not very good for my fair skin!

The *basic* Science:

The sunlight that reaches us is made up of two types of harmful rays: long wave ultraviolet A (UVA) and short wave ultraviolet B (UVB). Basically, UVA rays can age us and UVB rays can burn us. Overexposure to either can damage the skin.

Labelling:

We want to make sure that our sun cream offers great protection from both UVA and UVB rays. Here's how those labels translate:

- The SPF rating of a product refers to the UVB rays only
- Those little stars refer to the UVA protection level.

So ideally the you want to find an SPF50 5 star sun cream - that way you're protecting your skin as much as possible from those harmful rays. It's a myth that you can't tan wearing SPF50, you will still colour, however, there is no such thing as a healthy tan - a tan is literally your body’s response to being injured by UV exposure.

Here's what I've bought since returning home to protect me when I'm out and about this summer:

Both of these fit nicely in my handbag so I can have them on me all the time. The crucial thing about sun protection is making sure you apply it correctly - or its effectiveness drops rapidly. In order to get the best protection from your products you should;

Apply a generous amount of cream before you go outside and re-apply regularly. Don't skimp, it's not worth it - ideally re-apply at least every 2 hours and try to stay in the shade between 11am & 2pm as this is when those harmful rays are at their highest.

Hopefully you found that useful - I know that prior to snooping around into the science, I had little idea what to look for when choosing!

All this talk of sun screen made me think of this - so here's a little blast from the past to drive home the message & give you a little boost!