What To Look For When Shopping for SPF
We talk a lot about sunscreen and the importance of protecting your skin from the sun but we haven’t really broken down exactly what you should be shopping for when choosing the best SPF for your skin. These days, with so many on the market it can be easy to simply grab any option and call it a day but there are certain things you want to search for and others you certainly want to avoid at any cost. We’ve broken it down for you plain and simple here.
Of course make sure you’re shopping for a good SPF level. It’s best to have a sunscreen with at least an SPF 30 for your face and even higher is always better. Next you want to look for Broad Spectrum Protection. This is what protects your skin from UVA (premature aging) and UVB rays (sunburns), which are ultra damaging to the skin. Next is to make sure your SPF is water resistant. Look for a sunscreen that’s not only water resistant but also lasts in the water for at least eighty minutes. This ensures that the sunscreen will stick to your skin and not rub off with water or sweat.
Okay so what should you avoid? There are lots of ingredients to avoid but here are some of the main ones that are big no-nos: Oxybenzone, Avobenzone and Octocrylene. Oxybenzone is the most toxic and sadly the largest ingredient in sunscreen. It can enter the bloodstream and have negative consequences on internal organs. No thanks. Avobenzone makes it much easier for the sun to break through when it’s not paired with other chemicals making it a strange ingredient to have in a sunscreen don’t you think? And finally, try to avoid Octocrylene as well. It’s used to neutralize the sun’s rays but is widely shown to cause cancer. Surprisingly, over 2400 sunscreens use this chemical. Essentially, we want to think smarter and not harder when shopping SPFs this summer but thankfully there are a lot of great brands on the market with healthy and effective ingredients!