Sunscreen, Yes Our Melanin Needs It Too
Summer is here! Are you having fun while protecting your skin from the sun?

We just love summer for its abundance of vitamin D, long days, and warm weather. However, with summer fun comes more sweat, sun exposure and longer nights out. This means that you and your children will need their natural deodorant and their sunscreen at hand. Because guess what? We all need deodorant and we all need to wear sunblock. No matter what your skin tone is, you will need to use sunscreen.

Breaking the Myth: Black Folks Don’t Need Sunscreen

While you may have heard that you don’t need to wear sunscreen because you have beautiful brown skin, that’s just not true. It’s true that your skin is beautiful, but it’s also true that you’ll want to keep it safe and beautiful. 

The Melanin we have does protect our skin from the sun to a degree, but not to the degree we need to stay safe. Our Melanin protects us with a 13 SPF, but we all need at least 30 SPF for full protection. For this reason we need to be religious about how frequently we put on our sunscreen, both on ourselves and on our children.

Reasons to Protect Your Skin

The main motivation that keeps us all slathering on sunscreen is because of the big C word. Though we may feel beautiful when we get a little sunkiss, we don’t want to risk our lives for temporary beauty. Those of us with darker skin tones statistically have a lower chance of getting skin cancer, but have a higher chance of dying from it. That’s because we don’t check ourselves for it and it can be harder to spot. If we find it too late… Well, let’s not even go there, let’s just cover up please. 

Other reasons to protect your skin include:

1. Hyperpigmentation and sun spots
2. Wrinkles and fine lines
3. Sunburn
4. Skin irritation
5. For better, all around skin health

Takeaway

We love summer, and there are loads of ways and reasons to enjoy the heat. What we can’t underestimate is the power and effects of those intense UV rays. Enjoy the outdoors with your family, but please make it a value to cover up and protect your skin from the sun. It’s just another way of staying true to you.