Lifestyle Choices

BEGIN BY STAYING OUT OF THE SUN

To preserve your skin from premature aging, in addition to the constant use of a sunscreen on your face as part of your everyday skin care, you should understand the art of sunbathing—that is if you want to tan at all. Ideally, of course, you would be far better off pale.

As we’ve already said, the sun is your skin’s worst “ager.” It has been proved that exposure to ultraviolet light brings about permanent fundamental alterations in the genetic material of skin cells and encourages the process of cross-linking. These changes are cumulative and irreversible. Even when sun-exposed skin from an arm is grafted onto a protected area such as the abdomen and left there for years, it still remains older- looking and darker than the skin surrounding it.

Thanks to an increasing awareness of this ultraviolet damage, sun worship is becoming a highly sophisticated occupation. These days no woman in her right mind would spend hour after hour lying in the sun, developing the deep brown tan which for three generations was considered a sign that one was rich enough and idle enough to spend time lounging around resorts. The fashion in tanning now is to have a lighter skin, just touched with golden light, rather than the previously sought- after, baked look. And for the sake of your skin’s future, this change has come none too soon.

Of course in moderate doses, provided your skin is well protected, sunlight can actually be good for you. It stimulates circulation in the skin, makes you feel well, and is deeply relaxing. Also sunlight stimulates the formation of ergosterol, which when drawn into the skin becomes vitamin D. But this happens only if your skin isn’t washed for at least twenty-four hours after exposure. Bathing will remove the ergosterol before it can be made use of.

THE WAY YOU TAN

A tan is a protective reaction. It results from the formation of melanin, the skin’s natural pigmentation produced by special cells called melanocytes whose action is triggered by exposure to ultraviolet rays. Every woman has a unique capacity for melanin production, depending on her genetic inheritance. Dark, thick, Mediterranean skins produce more. This is why they will turn a darker brown than the “English rose” skin, which produces far less.

Regardless of the claims they make, there is no tanning product on the market that can promise you a tan of any specific depth. The color depends entirely on your skin’s ability to produce melanin, and nothing will alter that. The trick to successful and safe tanning is to use a suntan product that will allow the production of the pigment to take place slowly by screening out most of the sun’s ultraviolet rays, and to expose yourself only gradually to the sun.

Begin with fifteen minutes a day to each side—always between 9 A.M. and 11 A.M. or 3 P.M. and 5 p.m., when the sun’s rays are less intense and therefore less likely to cause damage. Then increase your exposure by five or ten minutes a day as you build up a tan.

Provided you have normal skin, a good rule for choosing a sunscreen is to use a moderate filter for your body and a high-protection product on your face. Your body’s skin ages much more slowly than the skin on your face, because it is usually protected by clothing. You can allow it to tan more without risk of its aging. Most of the large ranges of suntan products are carefully graded as to the amount of protection a product offers you. You can choose, say, a factor 7, or sun block, which almost completely shields your facial skin from ultraviolet rays, and a factor 4 or 5 for your body.

Although grading is not completely standardized and tends to vary somewhat from one range to another, generally you can gauge the kind of protection you’ll get from a product by multiplying the length of time you can safely stay out in the sun without burning, using no protection, say fifteen minutes in midsummer sun if your skin is pale, by the number on the product. This will give you an approximate time that is safe for tanning while using it. For instance fifteen minutes times factor 5 equals an hour and a quarter. Using it, provided you continue every half hour or so to reapply it, you can stay out for an hour and a quarter with safety.

Some suntan products claim to screen out the harmful, burning, UV-B rays while they let through the tanning, UV-A ones. By now technology in tanning preparations has become very sophisticated and there are indeed products on the market that will do just that. The only catch is this: These short, UV-B rays, which are mainly responsible for burning and which these products screen out, penetrate the skin only superficially anyway—mostly to the level of the epidermis. But, according to dermatological research, the longer, so-called beneficial UV-A, tanning rays, which these products allow through, penetrate all the way into the deep layers of the dermis and the underlying tissues. And these UV-A rays are probably most responsible for the degenerative changes in the skin’s structure associated with aging. So, whatever product you decide to use on your body, choose a high-protection product for your face that blocks out most of both the UV-A and UV-B wave bands. For the sad truth is that there is no way in which you can get yourself a deep tan and still protect your skin from premature aging.

THE TAN ACCELERATORS

There are also products on the market that offer not just protection factors but also tanning factors in them. They usually contain a derivative of the essential oil of bergamot, which has a natural tendency to oxidize certain amino acids in the skin’s cells, in particular tyrosine, which accelerates the darkening of the skin when it is exposed to ultraviolet rays even in grayish weather. These products can be useful if you want to begin tanning before the strong, midsummer sun appears. The advantage of tanning this way is that the melanin which is formed and built up gradually is your skin’s own protection against burning. But it still won’t protect you from aging. Too much ultraviolet is simply too much. Another disadvantage of this kind of product is that bergamot is one of the substances most often responsible for allergic reactions in women with reaction-prone skin.

What about sun lamps? The new artificial tanning equipment is made to block out most or all of the UV-B range. Because of this it makes claims for tanning without burning and without doing damage to the skin. The first claim is valid. The second is highly questionable. For the UV-A rays, on which these machines rely to do their tanning, will still be at work aging skin at deeper levels. Ultimately there is no truly safe way to tan and still preserve young skin. If you are going to tan using this kind of equipment or with a conventional sun lamp that has both UV-A and UV-B wavelengths, you can only hope to minimize damage.

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