No Matter How Crunchy You Are, Think Twice Before You DIY Sunscreen

Natural sunscreen do’s and don’ts. People keep asking me why I don’t sell a natural sunscreen. The truth of the matter is that I use my Nightly Repair Face Serum in the morning, and although I state no claims, it has enough natural SPF from the tamanu, carrot, and other oils that I don’t need any SPF on my face most days. (See below for citation on a study I found about SPF of tamanu). If I am to spend a day in full sun I use a lab tested, mineral based high SPF sunscreen from a company I trust such as Badger Balm, with sunglasses and clothing as sun protection. A day of full sun happens for me about once a summer. At most I tend to spend an hour or two in full sun, during which I am happy to soak up the rays and feel my melanocytes getting their Vitamin D absorption on. In the meantime here are a few do’s and don’ts. 1 Do refer to the EWG guide to sunscreen to educate yourself and to double check your choice. They have a search bar, where you can enter the product you are considering and they will rate it for you. (We aren’t on there yet, but we sure hope to be soon!) http://www.ewg.org/2015sunscreen/ 2 DON'T shmear yourself or your kids in a bunch of oil that you read somewhere online has SPF *8-10 and go to the beach all day. YOU AND YOUR FAMILY WILL BURN! For example I have seen people say things like, “Just use coconut and olive oil!”. As a pale skin person with experience in the sunburn from just shmearing oil department I can say to you, “NO! Make sure you have actual sunblock on if you are going to depend on a skincare product to protect you from the sun. 3 Any natural DIY recipe that has only oils, and no mineral blocking agent such as non-nano zinc oxide, is not to be depended upon. 4 If you want to make your own sunscreen you can check out this article for guidelines. She is talking sense. http://www.diynatural.com/homemade-sunscreen/ 5 An easy option is to add some non-nano zinc oxide (see chart in #4) to some of our body butter which is about SPF 8 and use that as sunscreen. Just warm up the body butter in the sun or however else you want and mix it in, then place in freezer to re-solidify. This is basically what I do for my own DIY sunscreen. I don’t use it for a day at the beach though, for that I call in the big guns that have been lab tested for SPF of at least 30. In case you are interested. Here is a link to the abstract about the tamanu oil study that I found. It was designed in order to assess the possibility of using tamanu oil in an opthalmic solution, since chemical sunblocks are cytotoxic (kill cells) and cause damage to the eye. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17188472.