Cancer Alert: Protect Your Skin this Summer
Summer is here and it is utmost important to protect your skin from the harmful UV rays. Too much exposure to the ultraviolet light, UVA or UVB from sunlight will inevitably cause premature skin aging, skin cancer, and a host of skin changes.
Obviously, one way to protect your skin from the summer sun is to put on sunscreens with SPF 15 or SPF30.
Although sunscreen can help to protect your skin from the dangerous UV but did you know that the sunscreen is a “double-edged sword”?
According to a report published at Guardian.co.uk, conventional sunscreens have ingredients which ahve dubious long term health effects. If you flip through your bottle of sunscreen and start reading the ingredient list, you will find the following “natural” ingredients - titanium, parabens, and petroleum based derivatives.
You should also be weary of ingredients such as Octyl Methoxycinnamate (OMC). This is one ingredient which is present in around 90 per cent of sunscreen brands. According to a study conducted by a group of Norwegian scientists, OMC has been found to kill mouse cells even at low doses!
The situation is worsen when Titanium Dioxide is also part of the ingredient list. Also another common sunscreen ingredients, Titanium Dioxide is a photo-activator that can react with other sunscreen chemicals and promote their free radical production or their cancer forming abilities. Recent studies have shown that Titanium damages the cells’ DNA and it has been listed as a potential carcinogen.
In other words, sunscreens are nothing more than poisonous concoctions loaded with carcinogens.
We all know we cannot go without with sunscreen but we will need to mitigate its uses. therefore if you are worried about the adverse effect of sunscreen, cover up or keep out of the sun completely. According Cancer Research UK, only 30 per cent of us stay in the shade.
We all know that it is not easy to avoid the sun, and the better option would be to purchase a quality organic sunscreen product.
Also, try to avoid unnecessary use of products with a high sun protection factor. For example, you don’t need to use a moisturiser with SPF at night.
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TheMenuCoach said,
July 7, 2007 @ 1:08 pm
Hello, I just wanted to comment that my brother is a postman delivering mail and he kept getting skin cancer even though he slathered himself with sunscreen every day then we found out about benzophenone. I’ll let you read about it here: Most chemical sunscreens contain from 2 to 5% of benzophenone or its derivatives (oxybenzone, benzophenone-3) as their active ingredient. Benzophenone is one of the most powerful free radical generators known to man. It is used in industrial processes to initiate chemical reactions and promote cross-linking(15). Benzophenone is activated by ultraviolet light. The absorbed energy breaks benzophenone’s double bond to produce two free radical sites. The free radicals desperately look for a hydrogen atom to make them “feel whole again”(15). They may find this hydrogen atom among the other ingredients of the sunscreen, but it is conceivable that they could also find it on the surface of the skin and thereby initiate a chain reaction which could ultimately lead to melanoma and other skin cancers.
organicpassion said,
July 8, 2007 @ 7:33 am
Hi MenuCoach,
Thank you for sharing your brother’s experience with us.
It is unfortunate that not everyone is unaware or perhaps not very well informed with the dangers of synthetic chemicals in skin care products.
That is why it is utmost important that we need to spread the message around and create this awareness. Learning how to read the ingredient list is also crucial in protecting ourself and our loved ones. That is also why I have created this blog :)