As much as sunscreen is crucial step in our skincare regime, but it is often neglected. People do not recognise the importance of this step in skin care. It helps in the prevention of long term skin damage like sun burns, premature ageing, hyperpigmentation, dark spots, dullness and even it prevents skin cancer. But people have so many myths regarding to sunscreens which I will be correcting in this post.

1. You have heard so many people saying You do not need to wear sunscreen during cloudy days. Right? Well the truth is Clouds do not absorb all the UVA & UVB rays coming from the sun. Which means our skin still absorbs UV and still going to get damaged. So wearing sunscreen even on cloudy days is the wise option.
2. People with acne prone skin should try organic sunscreen. No not really. Every skin type is different and organic sunscreen might not suits you so you have to go to the next option that is to use a chemical or should I say inorganic sunscreen. Acne prone skin or normal skin sunscreen should be a must step in your skincare.
3. You can actually make a DIY sunscreen at home by using fine zinc oxide powder with creams. No, people if you’re doing this you need to stop right now. This might seem cost effective but in the long term you’re risking your skin, i.e. it may cause skin cancer. Why you shouldn’t be doing this? Well you cannot make zinc oxide spread evenly on your skin at home. It is even difficult for the cosmetic chemists to make a sunscreen using machine and do a proper SPF testing. You should not play with your skin like that.
4. Wearing sunscreen is not a good option. You should rather go without applying it. You might hear people say say wearing sunscreen is useless. They probably think sunscreen filters may effects your hormones and nano particles can penetrate in your body and leads to various diseases.well there are some studies that show that sunscreen may cause hormonal imbalance but the studies are doe on cell level and on animals only. They don’t particularly translate to human beings. And even on animals results are inconsistent, only when the large amount of sunscreen results have seen. So now whether the sunscreen is responsible for hormonal effects, the results are not noticeable
5. Chemical sunscreen only works if you apply it to bare skin in other words sunscreen are meant to be fully absorbed into your skin for it to work properly. But in actual all sunscreen ingredients both chemical and physical or more precisely organic or inorganic work mostly the same way i.e. they for a film that absorb UV and turn it into heat. A few ingredients like zinc oxide and titanium dioxide will also reflect and scatter a small amount but all sunscreen ingredients will mostly be converting UV into heat. You still need to apply this 20 mins before sun exposure because the sunscreen products itself need to spread out and dry down-and form an even layer on your skin but this is for all sunscreens not for just chemical sunscreen.

6. SPF containing makeup products will give you enough sun protection you simply cannot rely on your makeup products for your sunscreen because the amount of the makeup you apply is so tiny, infect you need two milligrams of product per square centimetres of your skin to get the SPF ratings on the label. If you use less you will decrease the amount of protection. Another issue is that makeup usually doesn’t have broad spectrum protection so you won’t be protecting your skin adequately from UVA rays.
7. Layering products with SPF doesn’t increase SPF meaning layering multiple SPF products doesn’t benefits you because the total SPF you’ll get is the SPF from the product with highest SPF. See this picture for example if you put all these SPF altogether you will get SPF30 which is sort of true. Extra layer in your skincare will only add more SPF even on the areas which you might have left. So layering with multiple SPF containing products is definitely a good option. But sticking with sunscreens have almost same formulation is a better idea so different ingredients don’t react with each other leading to less sun protection.

Whether you like wearing sunscreen or not, it is a must. If I have left any myth do let me know in the comments also share this with friends so they also start wearing an SPF. My favourites sunscreen at the moment are Solotan tinted sunscreen and Solaris sunblock. Hope you find this helpful.