If you have ever sunbathed, swum in tropical waters, had a summers picnic, or any one of a million ther activities, it is quite likely you have had sunburn - that itchy, painful, smarting ugly redness that tells us we have overdone it in the sun.
But, what is sunburn, what does it mean and what can we do about it?
When the suns rays strike the skin, they penetrate through the uppermost layer (the epidermis), which sonsists largely of dead, old skin cells, to the dermis, the living, growing part of the skin that creates new skin cells.
These young, newly-formed cells are particularly sensitive to sunlight, which, when over-exposed, can dehydrate them, damage the cell walls, leading to disease and even cause severe damage to the DNA of the cell itself, which is one of the recognised starting points of skin cancer. As the heat persists in the skin, it causes further damage, literally "cooking" these new skin cells as they emerge.
These different forms of irritation all require a healing response, whose design is to stop us from causing further damage, whilst giving the skin time to repair itself. If we continue to gets lots of sun exposure, the skin will gradually darken, increasing its melanin content in the form of a suntan to filter out some of the harmful rays and protect us from chronic skin damage.
The image on the felt, shows some of the damaged cells in sunburnt skin.
In the short-term, however, the result is sunburn - probably the single most effective way of getting us to keep out of the sun (the body is VERY clever like that :-)
Like many other problems, children's skin heals more quickly from sunburn, but is also less likely to contain protective melanin. As we age, the components of our skin change in the same way that other parts of our body do, generaly making them less efficient at what they do.
So what can you do about sunburn?
The most obvious point is not to get burnt in the first place, either by not getting overexposed, or by using a high-quality, reflective suncreen (unlike most sunscreens, which can actually CAUSE skin cancer), but that isn't always possible.
The vast majority of aftersun products concentrate on remoisturising the skin, helping dissipate the heat at the same time as soothing the pain and itching. Some traditional remedies such as lavender or aloe vera oil can actually reduce the extent of the burn as they do for conventional burns (tip - ALWAYS keep lavender oil in the kitchen - you'll be amazed at how effective it is on burns!), but do little to help the healing process.
Recently, however, new preparations have appeared that actually stimulate the healing process and help repair the DNA damage that can be so dangerous if left unchecked.
This is a remarkable advance on previous treatments and can actually halt the damage in its tracks, not only reducing the pain, swelling, redness and itchiness of sunburn, but also helping resolve the dangerous DNA damage that can be the start of skin cancer.
The visual results are just as impressive. In the images below, the left-hand photo is of a man who has developed sunburn after overexposure. The right-hand image is of the same man the next day after applying DNA repair creme the night before. As you can see, the results were dramatic and enabled him to venture out the next day, which his friends who had been equally burnt could not.
