5. DECODING YOUR SUNSCREEN LABELS

With summer in full swing, it’s more important than ever to have sun safety top of mind and it's when most of you  remember to reach for sunscreen.  Why do we need to use sunscreen in the first place? Did you know that 10 Kiwis are diagnosed with skin cancer every hour  due to UV exposure and that >90% of premature ageing is due to sun exposure. This is so easily preventable with the correct use of sunscreen. 

When scrolling online or scanning the supermarket aisle, there’s no question that choosing  a sunscreen  can be  pretty confusing. Reading a sunscreen label shouldn’t feel like you are deciphering The Da Vinci Code. I guess if you’re like most people you just grab the bottle with the highest SPF. The higher the number the better, right? 

In today’s episode I’ll help you decode what the labels actually mean.  So you can spend less time debating between brands, and more time actually enjoying the summer. I’ll explain  the most common words and phrases found on  sunscreens  so you can approach the shelves (or the websites) with the confidence that you're getting what you want and need, whether that’s a formula that won't irritate your skin, one that won't harm the environment, one that won't budge when you sweat, or all of the above — you’ll be a master of  sunscreen labels. .

Transcript

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Kira, Sabona, Namaste, and hello everyone, and welcome. Thanks so much for tuning in. You're listening to Medicine in the Mirror with Dr. K, a South African-born Indian who made beautiful New Zealand home. Outer beauty is a mere reflection of inner health. Are you ready to join me on the journey to becoming more healthy and so too more beautiful? Then let's get started. Kiara everyone! Now back after a fabulous holiday. Summer is in full swing. And it's the time of the year when most of you remember to reach for your sunstring. I guess if you're like most people, you just grab the bottle with the highest SPF numbers on them. The higher the number, the better, right? But what do those SPF numbers actually mean? It's pretty confusing for sure. In today's episode I'll help you decode what the labels mean so that you can spend less time debating which bottle to get and more time actually enjoying the summer. But before I discuss the labels, I think I'll tell you a little bit more about the sun itself and why you need to protect your skin every day and not just in summer. Did you know that 10 Kiwis are diagnosed every hour with skin cancer? Yes, that's 240 cases a day. We have the highest skin cancer rates in the world, with more people dying of melanoma than on our roads. The good news is that most skin cancers are totally and very easily prevented. The cause of over 90% of skin cancer is too much ultraviolet exposure. And the sun is also responsible for over 80% of facial aging. That's a huge number. Really, the majority of your aging is going to be due to your sun exposure. Now let's just do a quick test. Look at your forearm and compare it to your abdomen. Do you see the difference between these two areas? Now, if you're over 25, you're sure to be able to see the difference. This difference is due to the little bit of sun exposure you get day in and day out. So really, the sooner you start using sunscreen, the better off you'll be down the track. The sun generates three main types of light infrared or warmth that we feel, visible light that our eyes can see in the daylight, and ultraviolet light, which we cannot see or feel, although it does penetrate our skin. Ultraviolet light has three groups, which are ultraviolet A, ultraviolet B, and ultraviolet C. Ultraviolet A or UVA is known as the aging rays. They tend to have a longer wavelength and they penetrate a little bit deeper into your skin, which means it goes a little bit beyond the superficial layer which is the epidermis and enters the dermis, where it actually affects the immune function of the skin and your collagen production, as well as causing some DNA damage to the cells. Ultraviolet B or UVB is slightly shorter in wavelength and only reaches the more superficial layers of your skin, therefore causing sunburn, and are known as the burning rays. UVC are the shorter wavelength and these are absorbed by the ozone layer and never reach the Earth's surfaces, so we don't really need to worry about it, although it is probably the most damaging to our DNA. It is used for UV cleaning, which we've heard a lot about lately, but it's not great to apply anywhere near your skin. The harmful effects of UV radiation on your skin can be reduced significantly and are definitely within your control. Together with seeking shade, slipping on your protective clothing and slopping on your sunscreen, you can most certainly prevent sunburn, skin cancer, and premature aging like wrinkles and age spots. Now that I've got you even more keen to use sunscreen every day, let me help you decode your sunscreen labels with some common definitions of what you may see and some that you shouldn't actually see any longer. Of course, this applies both to facial sunscreen as well as body sunscreens. Unfortunately, sunscreen labelling is pretty complicated and regulations about labelling vary from country to country, but there are a few simple rules that you can follow. Sunscreen is defined as a drug ingredient that is regulated by both the FDA in the USA and the TGA in Australia. It requires standardized testing to obtain many of the claims. In New Zealand, unfortunately, we have no such regulation or regular testing despite our high rates of skin cancer. Towards the end of last year, the Consumer Council testing showed that not all sunscreens offer the protection they claim to, and has since called for regulations specifying how often sunscreens be tested, as well as a mandatory testing standard in New Zealand. I'm sure there'll be more to come on that. But let's start looking at what these labels are. SPF SPF stands for Sun Protection Factor, and the number beside it indicates how well the sunscreen protects your skin against the sun's UVB rays, which are the ones that cause sunburn and increase the risk of skin cancer. It is not an indicator of how long you can stay out in the sun, but rather indicates how much longer it takes untanned skin to start to redden with sunscreen applied compared to how long it takes to redden without sunscreen. To work out the SPF of a sunscreen, lab tests are carried out on an area of untanned skin, such as the buttocks of human volunteers. Sunscreen is then applied liberally to this area and exposed to simulated sunlight via UV lamps. It's then measured how long it took for this patch of skin to turn red when exposed to UV with sunscreen and without sunscreen. To get the SPF number, a simple formula is used. The number of seconds it takes a patch of skin to slightly redden when it's covered with sunscreen is divided by the number of seconds it takes to slightly redden when there's no sunscreen. For example, say it took 300 seconds for skin to burn with sunscreen and 10 seconds to burn without it. 300 is divided by 10, which is 30, so the SPF is 30. It sounds complicated. A much easier way to remember is that a sunscreen with an SPF of 15 lets in 1 in 15 half a rays. In other words, it gives you a 93% protection. Similarly, an SPF 30 will let in one in 30 rays, which means you get a 97% protection. While an SPF of 50 will let in one in fifty rays, giving you over ninety-eight percent protection. That's really not much difference in protection. The SPF scale is not linear to the UV protection, and some experts believe that the high SPF can mislead you into thinking you have much more protection than you actually do. But this is not entirely true because the UVA coverage is proportional to the UVB in most sunscreen, and it's more of a linear scale, so that when you get to an SPF 30, the UV coverage is still going up quite dramatically all the way to an SPF 50. Moving on to the term broad spectrum. This simply implies that you are getting protection against both the sun's UVA and UVB rays. The sun's UVA rays do not cause sunburn, rather they cause the skin to turn brown and age. UVA rays are known as the sun's silent killers because you don't feel them affecting your skin. And there's really not much pain associated with UVA, but they penetrate deeper into your skin, causing a somewhat different type of damage than UVB. If you want protection against both UVA and UVB, you'll need to check that your sunscreen is broad spectrum. Some sunscreens include a UVA rating. You may notice the letters PA followed by plus signs on the label. This was a system developed in Japan to represent how much UVA protection the product offers. PA ratings measure only how the sun's UVA rays cause the skin to turn brown and stay brown. It's a process called persistent pigment darkening or PPD. The PA rating system is from 1 plus to 4 plus, simply meaning the higher the PA rating, the more UVA protection you have. PA plus 1 means you get some UVA protection. PA plus 2 moderate UVA protection. PA plus 3 high UVA protection and PA plus 4 extremely high UVA protection. However, the problem is that not everyone's skin turns brown from being exposed to the sun, and so it's very variable, as often skins get darker and some not so dark, and some take much longer than others to turn brown. So really there's currently no internationally agreed standard system of testing and measuring UVA protection. Both the TGA and FDA allow a product to be labelled broad spectrum with an SPF of 15 or more based on the fact that scientific data have demonstrated that these products have shown to reduce the risk of skin cancer and early skin aging when used in combination with other sun protection factors. So let's move on to water resistant. We know that sweat and water break down sunscreen on our skin, so it's never truly waterproof, and therefore the term waterproof has been completely removed and replaced with water resistant. The details on the bottle that say water resistance has a time specified next to it, which simply means how long the sunscreen will stay protective on wet or sweaty skin. All sunscreens that are marked as water resistant must have a rating of between 40 and 80. This indicates how long the sunscreen remains effective while you are swimming or sweating. Really means that after 40 or 80 minutes you will have to reapply sunscreen. Sunscreens that have a water rating of 80 might actually state that they are very water resistant. This can cause confusion as well as sunscreen labels usually indicate that you should reapply every two hours. For example, suppose you apply sunscreen at 10am and then head off on a tramp. It states that you should reapply every two hours so that you believe you're fine until 12pm. But you come across a lovely lake and decide to go swimming. That means if you are using a water resistant sunscreen rating of 40, at 1040am you need to reapply your sunscreen in order to stay fully protected, even though it hasn't been two hours. Another significant label is the expiry or use by date. Sunscreens are usually tested to last between 1 and 3 years, and expiry dates are important because active ingredients can oxidize or break down over time, losing their effectiveness. What are the active ingredients? The active ingredients are the ones that are the true UV filters that protect you from the UV rays. There are usually two types physical, which is often known as mineral or inorganic, or chemical, which is also known as organic. This is where even more confusion arises, because in chemistry, organic chemicals are those that contain a carbon and hydrogen bond. And really anything living is either organic chemical or derived from. Inorganic chemistry is when you're thinking about minerals and non-living things such as metals. The problem is that we also now use the term organic to mean organic farming or natural products that have been produced with no chemicals. So there's a lot of confusion because an organic sunscreen is a chemical sunscreen. A mineral or physical sunscreen will list zinc or titanium dioxide only in the active ingredient section. And perhaps you may notice iron oxide too. This is which protects you against the blue light that's given off by your screens. Anything else listed other than these three are usually chemical UV filters. Physical sunscreens create a barrier between your skin and the sun to form a protective layer, reflecting off most of the light which your skin is exposed to, while chemical sunscreens sink into your skin to absorb the UV rays and turn this into heat energy. Some of the latest research, however, supports the fact that physical sunscreen also absorbs the rays and convert it into heat. Chemical sunscreen active ingredients include avobenzone, oxybenzone, octisolate, octocryline, homosylate, or octic noxate. Chemical sunscreens tend to be easier to rub in but are more likely to cause allergies, whereas the physical sunscreens can leave a white residue and make you look a little bit ashen, especially if you have darker skin like me. But they are much less likely to cause skin reactions. One thing to be careful about though, some sunscreens will often be labeled mineral physical or mineral based, but actually contain a combination of both mineral as well as chemical filters. That's why you need to be able to show to check what the active ingredients are to know what your sunbrock truly is. Along with the types of active ingredients, the FTA also requires all brands to list the percentage of each active ingredient used. Another label of significance are other ingredients or inactive ingredients. Please don't ignore inactive ingredients or think that they're unimportant. They are usually added to help emulsify, moisturize, preserve or smooth out your sunskin on your skin, and they are listed either in alphabetical order or from highest to lowest concentration. It is important to look for ingredients that you may be allergic to, or ingredients that may trigger breakouts, especially if you're predisposed to acne, or ingredients that may exacerbate eczema, or if it has fragrance, which is the most common cause of skin allergies. It's also best to avoid sunscreens that integrate insect repellent. Sunscreen should really be applied every two hours, whereas insect repellent is used much more sparingly. Another term that you may see on your sunscreen is sports sunscreen. This is not a regulated term and is simply a marketing term for water or sweat resistant. Another marketing term often seen is baby sunscreen. Like the word sports, this is not a regulation that has been defined for the use on sunscreen. In general, when you see the term baby on sunscreen, it simply means that the sunscreen is more likely to contain mineral base like titanium and zinc oxide, as these are less likely to irritate babies' sensitive skin. But then again, you probably need to check the active ingredients yourself. In babies under the age of six months, it's best to avoid all sunscreen and protect their skins rather by keeping them in the shade and dressing them in appropriate protective wear. With children over the age of six months, a sunscreen with either zinc or titanium dioxide is recommended as it's more appropriate for sensitive skin of infants. But even when using sunscreen, it's best to keep children in the shade and dress them in appropriate protective wear. Another label on your bottle may be for sensitive skin. Again, this is not a regulated term for sunscreen. It simply implies one of three things that the sunscreen contains one or both of these active ingredients, either titanium dioxide or zinc oxide. Two, it does not contain fragrance, oil, pabber, or active ingredients found in chemical sunscreens, and three, it is hypoallergenic. You may have recently seen the term reef safe or reef friendly on sunscreen labels. It's thought that the sunscreen can cause coral toxicity and coral bleaching. This again is not a regulated term, but fears that it will erode the coral reefs further, has seen Hawaii ban two chemical sun ingredients. Those sunscreens that are reef safe are usually the physical sunscreens which include zinc and titanium dioxide, although recent evidence suggests that nano zinc particles also contribute to coral bleaching. You may have also noticed the term dermatologist tested or dermatologist recommended, and again there is no guideline or industry standard that determines the use of these phrases. Some companies ask dermatologists to test the quality of the products. That's dermatologists tested, while other companies ask dermatologists to try a product and say whether they would recommend product to the patient. That's dermatologists recommended. These terms should be taken with a grain of salt because it's usually just another marketing hype. The FDA has completely stopped the use of the term sunblock, which was previously used interchangeably with sunscreen. As really, there's nothing that blocks the sun from you completely, and therefore it reduces the risk of you thinking you are getting better protection than you actually are. Other labels on your sunscreen will include directions of how to use it, including reapplying it. The question I often get asked as well is how much sunscreen should you apply? The common directions on sunscreens usually say apply liberally, but what does liberally mean? The recommendation is that you apply half a teaspoon to your face and one golf ball amount to your upper body and another golf ball amount to your lower body. But not everyone has the same size body or face and not everyone has the same amount of skin exposed. Most people underapply sunscreen, using a quarter to half the amount that is required. But using half the required amount only provides you with the square root of the SPF. So for example, if you use half the amount of an SPF 30 sunscreen, you are only provided with an effective SPF of 5.5. My personal recommendation is that you apply enough sunscreen by spreading a layer that you can see over the areas of your skin that will be exposed and then rubbing this layer into your skin. Then apply another thinner layer over this. When should you ideally apply sunscreen before you head out into the sun? It's recommended that 15 to 30 minutes before you go outside, you should apply the sunscreen, enabling it to be absorbed before you get dressed. If you get dressed immediately after applying sunscreen, most of it rubs onto your clothing where it can't help your skin. I repeat, you must first apply sunscreen before you go outside. Waiting until you get outside exposes your skin to an incredible amount of damage. Research has shown that sun damage begins the first minute your unprotected skin sees daylight. Not sunlight, but daylight. But why do you need to reapply sunscreen? If you use a really good quality sunscreen at least once a day in the morning under your makeup, we know that the good sunscreens are quite photostable and long-lasting and you will get adequate protection with an SPF 50. If it is applied in adequate amounts and you're not sweating or rubbing it off or out in the sun too long. If, on the other hand, you're going to be outdoors in the sun all day, then this is a different scenario. What we need to do is looking at reapplying. The sun's rays break down some of the sunscreens while you may also rub it off with the things you do. To continue protecting your skin from the sun when outdoors, it's recommended that you reapply sunscreen every two hours or after toweling off, when sweating or after being in water. Once again, I reiterate that if you are using a water resistant sunscreen, you will need to reapply it every 40 to 80 minutes. So, where do you apply sunscreen in your normal skincare routine? Sunscreen is always the final step in your daytime skincare routine. This is exactly how sunscreens are tested to earn the SPF rating. Nothing should be going over them. Any skincare product that you apply over sunscreen dilutes and reduces its effectiveness. Research has also shown that skin gets an extra boost by applying an antioxidant-rich serum before your sunscreen. Antioxidants help further give your skin protection from the environmental factors that so slowly chip away at your youthful appearance. When discussing sunscreen, I often hear that my makeup has SPF. Unfortunately, this is where the mistake lies. You see SPF on your product and assume that it's got good sun protection. But a cosmetic product and anything that is not a primary sunscreen, so really anything that's not a sunscreen, like foundation or any makeup product, doesn't have to be tested and approved to have an SPF label on the product. Whereas something that's a primary sunscreen, so something that really is just a sunscreen or is marketed as a sunscreen needs to have proof and be tested. So the bottom line is that first of all, the makeup products are unreliable. So what they say is the SPF or sun protection is not necessarily accurate. And the second thing is that we just don't apply enough of it in the volumes needed to give it us adequate protection. Another question I often get asked is can I apply makeup over my sunscreen or will it reduce the ability of the sunscreen to protect my skin? There's not much data on this, as most sunscreens are tested in lab situations and not real life. In my opinion, it won't if you follow simple guidelines like wait a couple minutes for the sunscreen to set on before applying your makeup. Secondly, apply the foundation gently without excessive pressure over blending. And thirdly, using a foundation, baby cream, or tinted moisturizer that contains S sunscreen is even better. Do you get more protection if you layer your sunscreen and makeup? This is a very common misconception. Really, the highest SPF you will get is the SPF in the product with the highest SPF as it cancels out the lower number. So for example, if you use an SPF 30 with your sunscreen and your makeup has an SPF 15, you will only get an SPF 30 and not an SPF 45, adding the combined effect of the SPF. My general advice is as long as the sunscreen offers all of the following, you will be adequately protected from the sun. Firstly, an SPF 30 or greater, a broad spectrum protective agent, a water resistant one, because you most certainly would be sweating over the summer, and the best sunscreen I advise is the one that you like and you are going to use regularly. As I say, there is never a reason not to wear sunscreen every season. So I hope this helped you clarify what some of the labels on your sunscreen means. If you have any questions, just direct message me on social media or email me at medicintinthemirror at gmail.com and I'll happily answer your questions. That's it for now, guys. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Thanks for listening. Please hit subscribe on iTunes or follow on Spotify so you don't miss the next episode. I'd really appreciate it if you could leave a review and ratings on iTunes. Follow me to SilverMember on Insta and Facebook for behind the scenes updates. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time.