Protecting your skin from the sun is one of the very most important aspects of any anti-aging skin care routine. It is the one essential that if ignored can completely mitigate all of your other healthy choices. Unfortunately, keeping your skin safe from the sun is a little more difficult than many realize.

There are two types of ultraviolet rays that effect your skin – UVA and UVB. In the past we thought UVB was really the only UV ray that caused any danger as it is what causes the burning of the skin. People thought that the more prevalent (up to 40x more prevalent) UVA ray was of little concern. Due to this, many sunscreens were designed only to be effective against UVB rays.

Now we realize that it is actually the UVA ray that is more damaging. While UVB can give the skin a superficial burn on the top layers, UVA actually penetrate much deeper and are responsible for the majority of skin aging. They have also been shown to be directly related to the development of skin cancer. The use of tanning beds, which use primarily UVA rays, have been shown to dramatically increase a persons risk of developing skin cancer.

UVA unlike UVB are also able to easily penetrate windows, and are equally powerful at all hours of sunlight throughout the day. Read the rest of this entry »