Anti-Aging Skin Care: How to protect your Skin from the Sun and repair Sun Damage

One of the most important things you can do in anti-aging skin care is to try and stay out of the sun. Due to carbon emissions over the past two centuries, the ozone layer has become a lot thinner, resulting in increased dangerous sun ultra-violet (UV) light radiation which causes serious harm to the skin, especially to light-skinned people, and those that enjoy basking in the sun.

People with lighter skin are more prone to skin sun damage than their darker skinned counterparts because they have less melanin, which is the first line of defense against the sun. Melanin in the skin absorbs the UV rays to protect itself.

Try stay out of the sun’s menacing rays between 10am and 2pm. If you’re going out into the sunshine for prolonged periods of time, use a good sun block with at least 15 SPF. The higher the SPF number, the better. If you’re going into the water, it is advisable to apply a water-resistant sun block so that it protects the skin in and out of the water. Even if you don’t deliberately tan in the sun, it is still advisable to protect yourself from its rays as much as possible. Anti-aging skin care is foremost!

Exposure to the sun’s UV rays can cause wrinkling, permanent dryness of the skin which causes premature aging, loss of elastin and collagen (which keeps the skin moist, young, healthy, and stretchable), and in the worst scenario, skin cancer in the form of melanoma. Sun damage often results in the DNA of the skin cells to become damaged resulting in the thickening and thinning of the skin in the healing process. Each time the skin cells heal from sun damage, the dead skin peels off, and doesn’t heal back in the same state as they originally were. This is how wrinkles develop. In extreme cases, cancer can develop in the regeneration process of these damaged skin cells.

Some solutions to repair or reverse sun damage are:

• Topical application (in the form of a cream or ointment) of green tea and Vitamin C helps protect and heal the skin from the sun’s harmful UV rays.

• Topical applications of Retin A, Glycolic Acid, or Lactic Acid applied to the skin after being sun burnt will result in exfoliation of the skin, assist with the healing process in repairing the damaged cells, and prevent future damage from UV radiation.

• One can also undergo intense light-pulse laser treatment that can reverse the effects of sun damage.

• Visit a dermatologist periodically to check for cancerous growths or tender areas where the skin has been damaged. Light-skinned people should be extra vigilant.

The best anti-aging skin care treatment against the sun is avoidance. Don’t expose yourself to excessive quantities of harmful ultra-violet sun rays, use sun blocks, and apply certain topical solutions to assist in the skin repair process. Don’t let it get to treatment phases: prevention is the key word here.

Wendy Wilken is the renown author of "Facelift Without Surgery" and a practitioner of holistic anti-aging skin care techniques. See her other products too.