Living with the Sun

Do you spend time in the sun?

Do you use sunscreen?

Could your sunscreen pose more of a threat to your health than full sun exposure?

These are important questions and it is worth investigating your choices about sun exposure. It may save your life and keep your family safe and healthy.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) Skin Deep Project provides consumers with ratings on many many cosmetics and household products. They have a system of rating products based on how healthy or harmful the ingredients are. It is really fun and eye opening to go through all of the products in your house to see how you are doing and where there may be room for improvement. EWG has a great guide to choosing sunscreen as well as articles with surprising facts about sunscreen. For instance, did you know that Vitamin A, (which may be labeled in a number of different ways, including: retinol, vitamin-A , or retinyl palmitate), is known to increase a persons risk of cancer when exposed to the sun, yet many sunscreens and other cosmetics still contain these ingredients? Check out EWG’s 2013 sunscreen guide at the link below.

http://www.ewg.org/2013sunscreen/

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I feel fortunate that when I was in massage school, one of my teachers and mentors, Scott Raymond taught me about the World Skin Project. In fact, Scott was instrumental in it’s inception. The World Skin Project is a non-profit devoted to the education of massage therapists and body workers on skin cancer awareness. Body workers see areas of a clients body that the client may never see. It was the detection of a malignant melanoma on Annie Powells back, by Scott, that very likely saved her life and lead to her devoting her life to this amazing project. Please take some time to look at their website and consider donating to the cause.

http://www.theworldskinproject.org/welcome.html

Cheers to a fun and safe summer!