Internally Inflamed
a conversation on sunscreen
Growing up, I spent my summers in a tiny beach town on the NJ coast so lathering up (SPF 50+) on a hot summer day was routine.
Albeit, it wasn't until the last five years or so that I became completely nutty about prepping my face with an SPF on the reg to preserve and prevent all the scary things (skin discoloration, wrinkling, aging, etc.) that come from sun exposure. So why is it that there have been SO many conversations surrounding SPF being a negative lately?
Kristin Cavallari came under fire UV rays recently, admitting on her podcast that she does not wear sunscreen.
Cavallari's guest, Ryan Monahan - a functional and Eastern medicine practitioner - said the sun is “life-giving” and “nourishing,” and that people now live “quite an inflammatory lifestyle.” According to Monahan, if you are “internally inflamed” and lacking antioxidants, the sun can “aggravate that” further. His theory? If you combat your internal inflammation, you can essentially train your skin to better tolerate the sun.
We here at House of Endo know a thing or two about being internally inflamed... yet, having seen more than a handful of my extended family show up to holiday dinners with Band-Aids on their face because they just had cancer carved out (SPF wasn't a thing until 1974) is enough for me to stick to a sunscreen routine, so thanks, but no thanks.
Surfing legend Kelly Slater, a vocal opponent of chemical-based sun protection (which tends to burn, itch, and sting the skin), recently hopped on the skincare wave and launched his own line of mineral lotions.
Slater wanted to create an SPF that would last a long time (seeing as he's in the water all day long) that he could trust would protect his skin from the sun's rays so Freaks of Nature was born and consists of three products: the Deeper Dive Moisturizer, the Daily Defender Sunscreen and the Peak Performance Sunscreen.
Skin cancer is the most common cancer in the U.S. and one in five Americans are estimated to develop it in their lifetime.
