So let me tell y’all about the crazies I work with. I burn easily, and there is very little shade, so I store sunscreen everywhere. My desk, the bathroom, my bag, the car, the office supply closet, etc. I often use it and offer to my colleagues when anyone needs to go out for a while.
We got a new guy on the team, he’s going out, I suggest he take some sunscreen. He tells me that sunscreen is poison and that you don’t really need it as long as you don’t wear sunglasses. He tells me that it’s wearing sunglasses that actually causes you to burn because your eyes don’t get as much sun so your brain doesn’t send the right chemicals out to protect your skin.
So blind people never get sunburn? Or always get sunburn?
Yeah I’ve seen an upsurge of people claiming sunscreen is toxic poison. Not sure where the fuck they pulled that from
Some of the chemicals do show up a bit in blood, but there’s no evidence it’s toxic iirc.
It’s a good thing my skin isn’t made of coral.
Maybe they read something about the titanium dioxide contained in some sunscreen products. There is some research indicating that its not as safe as we thought and that it might be carcinogenic.
Sometimes I think I’ve heard all the batshit nonsense. Other times I read something like this.
It’s actually irritating to me that the sun is bombarding us with ionizing radiation
(I know, not the same intensity) but think about the amount of precautions we take before turning on a UV lamp. Or before turning on a very bright LED which you are not supposed to look directly at. Well, neither you should look directly at the sun, but you get the idea
In a perspective, sun is so radioactive it can even decay paint and plastic! It can literally cook you alive and make your skin fall in pieces. This just seems usual to us because we were born with it, people would freak the hell out if a medical procedure had the same side effects
Look, I can make a right wing campaign out of this! BAN THE SUN SAVE YOUR KIDS FROM 800T (Terahertz) RADIATION
I’m sure you could get signatures as long as you don’t use the word sun, similar to that ban dihydrogen monoxide bit. Take video.
On the other hand, what bullshit is it that my stupid human body can’t survive being outdoors without medicinal cream. My ancestors would be ashamed.
Mud and henna masks and other full skin coverings are extremely common among indigenous people and presumably your ancestors as well.
Your ancestors had melanin production to fit their sun exposure and seldom lived past 40
Maybe tens of thousands of years ago, but 2000ish years ago 60ish was old age. The main reason life expectancy has gone up isn’t that old people didn’t make it to 50, it’s that young people didn’t make it to 2. If a couple has 5 kids, 3 of them die as toddlers and the other two make it to 70 the average life expectancy is about 30, but that doesn’t mean living past 30 is unusual.
Also, tens of thousands of years ago there was an ice age, but for the last 10k years light-skinned Europeans still had normal summers and worked in the fields.
Yes, that is when we evolved
You must know how averages work. The poster is correct. Average age at death is a horrible metric when you have gigantic birth and infant mortality rates.
No, I mean that for the brunt of humans evolving to be genetically roughly what we are today, it is unlikely many people were living much past their prime. I am talking about roughly 100,000 years ago up to around 10,000 years ago when humans developed from a largely hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
And only then?
Your ancestors didn’t shave
The worst is when is a cloudy Sumner day and you’re like there’s no sun mf, no need to sunscreen! But you still get burned the fuck out.
>be me
>white as everliving fuck
>put on 60 spf sun screen, as you should, and set a timer for an hour and a half to reapply, earlier than the recommended 2 hours
>alarm goes off, reapply
>STILL GET SUNBURNEDmfw
Lotion is good for the first coat, but the spray is so much easier to apply when you’re already sweaty and sand is everywhere.
I used to have that problem. I switched to 30 spf and don’t get burned anymore. I can’t really explain it, but my theory is that 50+ is marketing BS and doesn’t actually do anything. Or it could be that Banana Boat brand just really sucks and Hawaiian is more like lotion so it actually stays on my skin and also moisturizes, which probably helps because dry skin = gonna get burned.
Get 100 spf, I’ve never even tanned on that shit.
The difference between SPF 60 and 100 is like 1.1% better UV blocking, anything over SPF 50 is in a practical sense nearly useless.
For instance SPF 30 blocks 97% of UVB rays, is it worth paying more and slathering more potentially harmful (to the environment) compounds on your skin for 98% blocking? I think not.
I used to think the same thing, but the thing is we don’t care about the energy that goes into the sunscreen, we care about the remaining percent that goes into the skin. If you go from a sunscreen that absorbs 98% of the sun’s energy to one that absorbs 99% you are halving the amount of energy your skin is exposed to.
If you’re still getting burned with 98% absorption, then increasing that number by 1% would actually make a huge difference. And that’s without even considering things like having a safety margin for improper application.
Seems like in real world use it makes a difference.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0190962219327550
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29291958/
From another thing I read, people have a tendency to not apply enough sunscreen or apply it correctly. I’m sure if everyone did it perfectly it wouldn’t matter. All I know is anecdotally, when I switched to 100 I stopped getting sunburns, and I have been in situations with people who used their own lower spf, got a little burned still, and I came out of it pale white.
The price might be higher, but a quick look on Amazon and I’m seeing more than spf affecting that. The brand I buy is about 1.80 (usd) per ounce, and i see other brands with less spf for more. I see other brands with the same spf for less, and it seems like it’s between ~1.10 per ounce to ~2.80 per ounce so I’m not really bothered by my price. I don’t know anything about the environmental differences between spf so I won’t comment on that.
The average person should almost certainly not be using it, but maybe it would make the difference for extremely sun sensitive people.
what if your skin has a hit point system and that 1% difference is the breaking point of sunburn
I get a little pink from being outside for like ~20 minutes. That’s not really hubris lol.
Not wearing sunscreen and getting a sunburn is a psyop to get men to buy more aloe vera.
Which, btw, might feel kind of nice, but you’ll still get skin cancer.
You got to give props to the people who convinced idiots that sunscreen causes cancer.
I hadn’t heard that one. Somehow I’m not surprised though.
Yeah… The number of times I’ve heard something along the lines of “the sunscreen is worse for you than the sunburn” is too many.
I would wear suncream more often, but:
- I’m allergic to something in most brands of suncream so if I run out I’m having to deal with rashes all over where I used it.
- I hate how it makes me feel slimy after using it
There’s this Loreal suncream spray I like that I can’t seem to find that feels like water and when it’s dry, it doesn’t feel like you have suncream on. It’s perfect for me! I’m not allergic to it either so I can actually go in the sun without turning red and blotchy!
Yeah, and it’s also def NOT cheap.
that feels like water and when it’s dry,
What does water feel like when it’s dry?
Key word being “and”.
New question for the “water isn’t wet” fools unlocked.
only one way to find out
And then theres me who does not go outside that often, never uses suncream and doesnt get a sunburn when I decide to go outside for longer times.
Pour one out for the back of my calves. Every summer I forget.
Incredibly, my legs somehow never get burnt
Same until I got a bicycle
I put on sun screen every morning to ward off basal cell skin cancer. It sucks but it’s cheaper than going to the dermatologist to have basal cell skin cancer removed. The worst part is getting it in my eyes. On the plus side, the splotchy age spots on my temples have disappeared
My wife can spend all day in the sun and turn a nice shade of brown.
Not me. There is no “tan” for me. It’s either pasty white or lobster with no middle ground whatsoever.
I turn a lovely tan. It just happens after two weeks of bright red and screamy and a few days of pale and peeling.
i get burnt with multiple layers of sun lotion
If the cream wasn’t such a goddamn sensory nightmare…
UPF clothes FTWClearly you’ve never met someone like my wife.
