Choosing sunscreen protection can be a daunting challenge. There seem to be thousands of them out there, all with different claims. Remember, there is no 1 sunscreen that is perfect for everybody.
How Sunscreens Work
Choosing sunscreen protection can be a daunting challenge. There seem to be thousands out there, all with different claims. Remember, there is not one distinct sunscreen that is perfect for everybody.
How Do I Choose a Sunscreen?
As dermatologists, we formulated our sunscreens to provide you with ultimate protection.
First, we chose active ingredients that stand the least chance of causing an allergic reaction, and that are also rated as having the least potential to cause future harm from an environmental standpoint. We vetted our chemicals through our contact dermatology panel to make sure that we did not have any active ingredients that could irritate your skin. We also relied on recent scientific literature to eliminate those active sunscreen components which might cause harm to marine life (such as coral reefs). As a final check we consulted the EWG (Environmental Working Group) website for additional criteria. Since these issues are still being researched, companies cannot be 100% sure of how safe their products are; however MD SolarSciences aims to be as close as scientifically possible.
We matched our active ingredients with each other to give us the best blend of SPF and UVA protection we could achieve.
We used the exact same method in choosing our inactive ingredients, the base in which the sunscreen rests.
And we avoided all other additives, those that are touted as beneficial to the skin, such as vitamin A, vitamin E, botanicals, and others. All of these may be problematic from an allergic or irritant standpoint and we wanted a sunscreen that most users could be comfortably sure would cause no side effects including a formulation for sensitive skin.
And we then made sure that the sunscreens were not tacky, sticky, smelly, drying, or in any other way unpleasant.
We did this because we could not find sunscreens which matched all of these criteria. We want our patients be comfortable using our sunscreen.
When choosing a sunscreen, study the label and ask yourself the following questions:
Is the SPF high enough?
Is there UVA protection?
Are there any questionable ingredients which might cause irritation?
Are there any ingredients which might cause a potential allergic or irritate my skin (such as paba or oxybenzone)?
