Protect Your Skin From the Sun!!

I know what some of you are thinking already..."Not another one I already know how to put on sunscreen, I know tanning is bad, I know what skin cancer is..", but stick with me there's more to it than that and I promise to try as hard as I can to get it across without...hey...wake up! Anyways, It's gonna be pretty interesting, I promise. Today on the east coast it's around 106 degrees and I really like the heat but this is just too much. The sun is beaming down full force which is why I chose to talk about protecting your skin from it. I'm young and I know when I'm older I'll want my skin to be wrinkle free with no blotches or spots but we all know what reality hands us. Girls who are as pale as I am want their skin to be tanner, but a gradual self tanning lotion or spray is much better than frying yourself in the sun, just to get a burn that will sink in after a few days, resulting in a tan that lasts 1 or 2 months, causing long term damage to your skin. Long chain, huh? And that long term damage can be anything from deep wrinkles to dark spots, and of course the risk of skin cancer. This picture really caught my attention on the news recently:

This is 69 year old Bill McElligott. He was a truck driver for 28 years, and the driver-side of his face looks much older than the other side. Glass does not block UVA rays, so without sunscreen you could end up with skin like this. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, up to 90 percent of visible signs of aging are caused by the sun. When it comes to tanning beds, people who use them are 74 percent more likely to develop melanoma than those who have never tanned indoors. Speaking on a more personal level, my neighbor has had skin cancer, which was most likely caused by outdoor exercise without SPF protection. She had to have a patch of skin removed from her nose which has left a permanent scar. 

If you apply sunscreen and still burn, keep in mind that you should use at least 15spf, and preferably 30spf sunscreen and apply it 30 minutes before sun exposure, making sure to reapply every 2 hours, or the time suggested by the label on the bottle. If you never burn and think you don't need sunscreen at all, think again. A lot of sun damage developed within the skin cannot be seen with the eye alone. It makes me happy to see lots of new makeup with higher levels of sun protection aids in them. You can find it in almost any product now, so you can be protected everyday and grow up to be astonishingly beautimous (; See, sun protection and beauty do go hand in hand! You can be protected and still look cool! Hat hair is...the next big trend! heh..

  Thanks for reading! (: