Choosing the best sunscreen to protect your skin

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Dermatologist Nikki Sullivan shares the options for sunscreen to protect your skin from the sun. Sunscreen can help lower the risk of skin cancer, especially during the summer.

Transcript

00:00Many will be heading outdoors hopefully enjoying some of that sun and during the peak summer

00:04months activities like sun activities are very important and sunscreen essential.

00:10Here are some of the sun safety tips that we are talking about with Dr. Nikki Sullivan of

00:14the Mayo Clinic. Thank you for joining us this morning. Thank you for having me.

00:19Well Dr. Sullivan, you're a dermatologist, so what should we know about protecting our skin

00:23from the sun? So it's important to know that everyone regardless of their age, their their

00:29skin type, their gender, everybody needs to use adequate sun protection and there's lots of great

00:33ways to protect your skin from the sun. Seeking shade is obviously number one. Wearing sun

00:38protective clothing like long sleeve shirts when you're able to, wide-brimmed hats, things like

00:43that. Also sun protective, UV protective sunglasses are also really important. On your exposed skin

00:50it's really important to be wearing sunscreen of SPF 30 or higher with frequent applications

00:55about every 90 minutes and something that's water resistant. As a big sunscreen fan myself,

01:01what is the difference between the mineral sunscreen and the chemical sunscreen? Are there

01:05any concerns we should factor in with uses of these? So the sunscreen we recommend is the

01:11sunscreen you will use most often. So whatever feels the best to you, looks the best to you,

01:15is tolerable from your wallet. That's the sunscreen that you should use. The difference

01:20between a physical sunscreen and a chemical sunscreen has to do with the active ingredients

01:25in the sunscreen. So if you flip over your sunscreen bottle and look over the active

01:28ingredient label, you'll see the titanium dioxide or zinc oxide as an active ingredient. If your

01:34sunscreen says one of those two things, it's a mineral-based or physical sunscreen. If it says

01:39something different, then that's a chemical sunscreen. Both of those types of sunscreens

01:44work by helping to absorb the UV light on the surface of the skin and physical sunscreens also

01:49dissipate the UV light by reflection or by kind of bouncing it off the skin, whereas chemical

01:54sunscreens just sort of absorb the light and transfer it to heat. In about 10 seconds, can

01:59you tell us what we should think about for picking sunscreen for kids? So kids less than six months

02:05old really should just be completely out of the sun. If you're going to put sunscreen on them,

02:09it should be a mineral-based or physical sunscreen. Otherwise, parents really like

02:13the spray sunscreen. In that case, you should use it all for their body.

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