Today we're talking about body skincare and is your sunscreen killing you? Hello
TLC'S so I've just come back from France again.
This year I was in Nice this time actually cut that Antibes it's very nice.
And I'm sure most of you know, but the French pharmacies in fact most of the
European pharmacies have got a really interesting wide range of products that
we don't have over here or are only in selected stores over here. And a lot of
those products tends to be pour le corps for the body that's in French and I
just brought some back for you to have a look at this is Skinceuticals a brand
that we do have in the UK as you probably are aware I'm a big fan of
skinceuticals products but we don't have any of the skincceuticals
body treatments in the UK at all. I think it's just because you know it's so cold
over here we very rarely show skin and if we do, it's maybe just like a small
amount of skin and we seem to just care a little bit less because we're always
covered in jumpers and sick clothes and things like that. Whereas over in Europe
and other countries that are maybe a bit warmer borrowing the Middle East
obviously, they tend to have a little bit more feeling that they want to improve
the texture and quality of the skin on the body just as much as they do the
face so, these are two things that I picked up while I was over in France.
The first one is body tightening concentrate so if you have any areas
that are a little bit flaccid like for example underneath the arm the abdomen,
maybe the buttocks you can really give this a try. I have tried it myself but
actually I don't have that much skin flaccidity so it's kind of hard for me
to say whether or not I think it's a good product.
The ingredients are 2.5% tripeptide 5% yeast extracts which is a humectant
then 2% hydrolyzed rice protein as well which is an anti irritant. I don't know
give it a go if you've got slightly flaccid skin why not this one. I have
tried the body texturising treatment sorry body retexturing treatment,
because it's quite good for areas where you might have a little bit of dry skin
so for example on the elbow or on the knee I've used it on my feet as well and
I quite like this one I would buy this one again this one I
just bought to show you guys but the body retexturizing treatment has got 17%
urea which is something which will help to break the bonds in the superficial
layers of the skin and the epidermis and it allows the old dull skin to exfoliate
off more quickly it's also got 4% niacinamide which is good for any pause
or textural irregularities that you might have in the skin and also a little
bit of Holly Winnick acid as well let's talk about sunscreens so I wanted to
explore a little bit more about how it is that we're supposed to be using
sunscreens and what the differences are between different sunscreens so most of
my patients tell me that they prefer using a physical sunscreen rather than
chemical and I just wondered you know why why is that why are people
preferring to use physical rather than chemical apart from the way that it
feels on the skin so here is the accumulation of some of my knowledge
about sunscreens so first of all let's discuss what the differences are between
a physical and a chemical sunscreen so a physical sunscreen would be something
that contains zinc oxide titanium oxide and it's something that stays in the
stratum corneum of the skin so that's in their superficial layers of the skin
when the ultraviolet radiation hits your skin and you have a physical sunscreen
on it gets reflected by the zinc and titanium oxide if you're wearing zinc
and titanium oxide obviously and therefore it doesn't cause any kind
of free radical formation or anything like that sometimes you can see with a
chemical sunscreen because the chemical sunscreen penetrates more deeply into
the skin and it converts that ultraviolet
radiation to heat and free radicals so it's a little bit weird that a product
that is supposed to protect you from radiation protects you from the Sun
actually causes the production of more free radicals in the skin I've never
been able to get my head around that one really examples of chemical sunscreens
which are bad or beg your pardon chemical sunscreen ingredients which are
bad would be oxybenzone octane octane and home with salads and if you have a
look at your sunscreen that you have at home just check it out to see whether or
not you've got any one of those ingredients listed on the back because
if you do I would pretty much just throw that away
just get that sunscreen and just throw it straight in the rubbish because it's
probably doing you more harm than good there is a group called the
Environmental Working Group who have looked at the safety of various
different sunscreen ingredients and according to them 40% of the sunscreens
that we commonly use are directly directly contributing to people having
skin cancer and only 5% of the sunscreens tested met their criteria for
being safe and giving good protection which is a crazy crazy small number so
let's talk a little bit about those top two ingredients which are in chemical
sunscreens that you should really really really really really not be using the
first one that I mentioned to you was oxybenzone so that was given an 8 out of
10 badness racing by this environmental
working group the reason for that is because it
a hormone disruptor now I know what you're thinking who cares right okay as
if it's a hormone disruptor you hear about hormones you know they're in the
in cattle in in meats it's not really something which is well understood but
what hormone does is it helps to regulate all the important things that
are going on in your body so say for example your fertility or whether or not
you're hungry whether or not you're tired all these processes that occur
according to you some kind of rhythm are regulated by hormones so your hormones
kind of decide whether you're fat or thin or for example how tall you're
going to be as you're growing up so if you've got a product that you're
applying directly onto your skin which is disrupting that hormone pathway it's
never gonna be a good thing it's always gonna be a bad thing to do that and this
particular chemical that oxybenzone it was found to decrease fertility in men
by 30% let me just say that again so it decreases fertility in men by 30% I know
we all thought it was about how much freedom they had down there and whether
or not it was getting a bit too warm for the sperm but if you're trying to
protect your skin and you're using a sunscreen with oxybenzone in it you're
decreasing your fertility by 30% so maybe don't use that particular chemical
interestingly oxybenzone was found in almost all Americans isn't that
absolutely crazy so what I mean is evidence of this chemical was found
within the cells within the blood of almost every single American person
showing that it it lingers in the system after you've used it I mean it wasn't
given a danger rating of eight out of ten for no reason it is a pretty
dangerous chemical to be using so maybe try try not to do that the second one
was Achtung Tate's so this one is a estrogen mimic
and it also has effects on fertility as well as in decreasing fertility it also
has a bad effect on some types of breast cancer so it increases the growth of
specific types of breast cancer cells also not a good thing if you're exposing
yourself to it by using a sunscreen in the hope that you're going to protect
your skin from from skin cancer and from burning to find out later that actually
it's got all these negative effects on your hormonal system and the octonaut
take was given a badness rating of six out of ten by the Environmental Working
Group so both both bad things now I just want to talk a little bit about the
problem with using a high SPF so SPF you know when you're in the supermarket or
in the drugstore or wherever it is that you go to purchase your sunscreen you'll
see that there are lots of different SPF is available right the way through from
ones which are like SPF to or you know tanning oils the ones that you just
lather all over your body in the hope of cooking yourself outside and going a
lovely sort of burnt crispy brown shade all the way through to SPF 100 so the
difference between using an SPF of 50 and 100 why would you use an SPF 50 why
would you not always just use an SPF of 100 it's because there's actually not
that much difference between the two so an SPF of 50 will block about 98% of UVB
radiation whereas an SPF 100 will block about 99 percent if you when used
correctly of UVB radiation so there's like 1% difference between the two and
what that does is it kind of gives people the feeling that they can have
poor habits in the Sun so you know how it is you pick up your SPF
100 you're lathering it all over yourself you thinking yeah I'm pretty
much now impervious to the sun's rays I can go and sit out in the midday Sun as
much as I like not worry about maybe having to reapply it or whatever will
come to reapplication a second or not wearing a hat or anything like that
because I am wearing my SPF 100 so that's bad also the difference between
SPF 50 and 100 is only for UVB so SPF is just a marker of how protected your skin
is in the Sun against ultraviolet B rays not a it's B B only B is the the
wavelengths which makes you red leads to precancerous lesions and squamous cell
carcinomas which is a type of skin cancer UVA is the one which actually
gives you more DNA damage and gives rise to the slightly more serious melanoma
which has gained another type of skin cancer obviously all skin cancers are
bad but I'm talking about in terms of survival rates it's much worse for
melanoma than it is for for the other types so that's why it's important to
protect against both UVA and UVB so the amount of UVA protection that you will
have in an SPF is not it's not consistent so for example normally it
will be about the ratio one to two three so UVA will be one UVB will be three but
as you go up in the SPF that ratio changes because there isn't you can't
get a very very very very very strong UVA protection it's only UVB so that's
something to bear in mind as well I think for most people using an SPF of 30
to 50 is fine even if you're going somewhere that is sort of you know very
tropical or very hot as long as you're going to use something at least is at
least 30 I think that's an okay thing for you to
do there are photostability between chemical and physical sunscreens is also
different so that old adage that you should reapply your sunscreen every two
hours was brought about when most sunscreens were chemical not physical
it's because you you literally did have to reapply them every two hours to
maintain the same level of protection rose with most physical sunscreens you
put it on and you probably don't need to reapply it every to two hours because it
most of them do really really stay on the skin so the one that I was using a
few days ago in least when I was over there copped on to you and I can still
actually see some of it on the skin because they had a slight tint to it so
I still have it and trust me I have showered it's not like I haven't
showered for a couple of days I have it's just still there it sticks to your
skin really really well so I don't know why you wouldn't use a physical
sunscreen okay so that's all we've got time for today
next week we're going to talk again a little bit more about sunscreens I have
left the most important information until then so we'll see you then
for a bit more sunscreen chat in the meantime please like comment and
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