Sunscreen may be most effective product for younger looking skin

Do you want younger looking skin? This question is posed by countless products, and most of them don’t deliver on the promise of keeping your skin looking youthful. As it turns out, the most effective product on the market to keep your skin looking fresh and young may actually be sunscreen! Ultraviolet radiation from the sun is responsible not only for skin cancer, but for aging and wrinkling the skin, as well. In a groundbreaking study, Australian researchers found that people who applied sunscreen daily developed fewer wrinkles on their skin than those who didn’t use sunscreen regularly.  The best news is that it seems middle age isn’t too late to start getting benefits from using sunscreen! The study revealed that adults up to age 55 who used sunscreen frequently, had 24 percent less skin aging than men and women who used it only occasionally.

“Our findings now provide evidence that regular sunscreen use slows down skin aging in healthy middle-aged men and women,” said study author Dr. Adele  Green, a specialist in public health medicine and senior scientist at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane, Australia. So it seems, sunscreen not only helps prevent skin cancer, but can help you look younger, longer! Avoiding too much sun, covering up, and staying in the shade as much as possible are still the best ways to keep your skin healthy and cancer free, but for Arizonans with an active lifestyle, sunscreen is a nice alternative!

The Skin Cancer Institute has made the “Protect Your Skin” kit available to businesses and individuals who want to make sunscreen convenient for everyone. Visit protectyourskinaz.org to learn more. Along with wearing your sunscreen, to keep your skin healthy remember to get it checked every year by your healthcare provider or a dermatologist. If you do not have a doctor, come to our annual Melanoma Walk on Saturday, November 2nd to get a free skin cancer screening, and walk to support the fight against melanoma. Enjoy an evening outdoors while doing something good for your skin!

Visit fightmelanomatoday.org to register today!

Source: Annals of Internal Medicine, June 2013.