Simple Skin care in tropical countries - SunScreening

I guess many should have quite some experience on how to coupe with the extreme weather of winter and its dramatic temperature change, for a tropical person like us.

Temperature of tropical countries stays rather consistant at about 34degree. They get lots of sunshine and humidity level is normally quite high. It may sounds good as weather is a big uncontrollable factor that will affect our skin condition. Nevertheless, tropical countries are located very near to the equator and thus sun rays are stronger, compare to other countries in the world. I believe most of us can feel the heat once we step out of our cozy room.

This leads me to an important topic: Are you putting on your sunscreen? Does the product that you use on your skin contain SPF (Sun Protection Factor)?

What is SPF? How much do I need?

Many of the consumers have these common questions in mind. This is because in the market, there are many skin care products with sunscreen of various SPF level, SPF15, 30, 45 etc.

SPF refers to the how many times your skin is protected against the sun. To put in simple, how many pairs of umbrellas are sheltering you.
Actually the need of SPF various from person to person; it highly depends on how fast the person gets burn (signs of redness) under the sun.

For example:
Miss A get burn in 10 minutes. She used a SPF 15 on her face. This means that she will get 10*15times = 150 minutes of protection.

Miss B gets burn in 30 minutes. She also used SPF15 on her face. She will get 30*15times = 450mintues of protection.

Sun protection for face and other parts of body

Please put on the sunscreen once you are outside the house. Too much exposure of the sun (without protection) will lead to over production of melanin which are responsible for freckle and pigmentation. The sun is also capable to attack the internal layer of our skin, breaking down the collagen and elastin. And all these will cause aging will to come faster. This applies for both face and body.

Many people ask me sun protection for face is the same for the other part of the body. I ask them if there are special products for face sunscreening. They nodded. While choosing for product with sunscreen, we have to be really careful as face skin is the thinnest in our whole body. Its less than 0.1mm thick. Therefore we minimise the amount of chemicals putting on it.

For Face: A moisturiser with SPF15 will be good. For additional protection, one can additional sunblock stick or tinted moisturiser on top of our normal moisturiser. One interesting fact on Tinted moisturizer is that, it has minerals that have reflecting surface, helps to reflect the harmful UVB/UVR away from our skin. Therefore protecting our skin more.

For Body: As the skin on the other part is thicker, you can use higher SPF. If you going to be out in the sun for sports, you have to re-apply regularly as the wiping your perspiration will remove the sunscreen. You may like to know that those tanning lotion are not really protecting your skin! It’s more on 'frying' your skin. Therefore choose a Sunscreen lotion appropriately.

How to apply the sunscreen?

It’s just a tube of cream, but it makes a big difference on the method of application.

For Face: Put your moisturiser as per normal. If you want to put the tinted location, focus more on the protruding area of your face, like nose, forehead and cheek area. If you to notice, those are the places where pigmentation or freckles are often spotted! Dot the tinted moisturiser on these areas and spread out.

For Body: This is the more tricky part. Apply deliberately. Please do not be stringy if you want maximum protection. Do not spread too thin layer as it will minimize the SPF.

Sunscreen for the Eye?

I saw this illustration on a documentary about sunscreen previously. It makes me realise that to have sunscreen for our eyes are every important too!

In the program, the host describe our eyes will be fried by the sun, just like when she break an egg on the car bonnet, it becomes cook almost immediately!

Thus get a good protection if you do not want your eye to be 'fried'!

Sunscreen for our eye simply refers to a good pair of sunshade (sunglasses). Do remember to get lenses with UV protection, may it be for your spectacles or contact lens. Use these while you are outdoor, may it be shopping or sporting.

I hope the above have given you useful tips on sun protection. So next time, when you want to 'soak out' in the sun, make sure you have done the above.

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