Your Skin In The Sun

"Beauty's but skin deep," observed a poet of Elizabethan times -- a depth, actually, of only a few millimeters. This thin, elastic covering gloves the body from scalp to sole, giving color and character to the human form. Of all the body's tissues, none is more exposed to disease and injury than the skin.

Here are a few tips and trivia:

• Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer. Ultraviolet light is its leading cause. People of northern European descent, having the least amounts of melanin, are most prone. Ireland, with a fair-skinned population, has one of the world's highest rates of skin cancer, even though it does not receive especially high amounts of ultraviolet light. Basically, the darker your skin is naturally, the less likely you are to get skin cancer.
• It is ironic that tanned skin is associated with a youthful, healthy look. Steady tanning can lead to premature wrinkles, sags and discoloration.
• Sun damage is cumulative and irreversible. Once the skin is so affected, no amount of facials or moisturizers can reverse the damage, which usually does not show up until later in life.
• You might be getting only half as much skin protection from your sunscreen lotion as you think. The thickness of the sunscreen layer on your skin is the key to getting the sun protection promised on the bottle. In a clinical study, 50 people applied a variety of brands of sunscreen the way they normally would. Scientists added fluorescent coloring to the sunscreens so the thickness could be measured. Most of the sunscreen-users rubbed on their lotion only half as thick as the recommended thicknesses.
• Scars have less pigment than the rest of your skin, so they're especially vulnerable to sunburn--and prolonged redness. You should make certain to cover all exposed scars with a sunscreen with an SPF of 25 or higher.
• A simple, moderately severe sunburn damages the blood vessels to such an extent that it takes four to fifteen months for them to return to their normal condition.
• The most effective sunscreens contain the chemical agent paraaminobenzoic acid, PABA, which duplicates the action of melanin by absorbing ultraviolet rays. Products such as baby oil and coconut butter do not protect the skin from burning at all.
• In the United States, more than 500,000 new cases of skin cancer are found each year. This is why one in seven Americans can expect to get skin cancer.
• Some diuretics, antibiotics, tranquilizers, birth control pills and diabetes medications can add more salt to your sun-burn wounds. They can make you sun- sensitive. So can some medicated soaps, perfumes and "wrinkle removers". So if you use any of these medications or products, doctors advise you to take extra precautions when exposing your skin to the sun.
• In only one square inch of human skin there are 19 million cells, 625 sweat glands, 90 oil glands, 65 hairs, 19 feet of blood vessels, 19,000 sensory cells, and over 20 million microscopic animals.