Sunlight causes skin cancer, with time. It also causes wrinkles, both fine and deep, brown spots, broken blood vessels, and pre-malignant actinic keratoses, which are not only unsightly but also can progress to skin cancers. Sunscreens and sun-protective clothing are necessary to keep your skin healthy.
Living in South Florida, most of us have had too much exposure to sunlight. Sunlight damage is cumulative, which means that it builds up over time. Sunlight exposure can cause skin cancer. A child may get severe sunburns but they do not typically result in skin cancer until later in life. While Dr. Kaminester has seen skin cancers in sailors at age 14 and 16 years old, most sun damage takes years to produce skin cancer. However, there are many other results of sun damage that occur more rapidly and are quite bothersome to the patient.
Acute sunburns cause peeling and blistering. If you see Dr. K within a day of getting sunburned, there are measures he can take to help you to both be more comfortable and have fewer side effects. Sunlight can also cause rashes in persons taking certain medications (like medications to control high blood pressure) or who have certain “sun-sensitive” or photo-sensitive skin diseases (like lupus erythematosus). Sunlight can even cause a skin reaction to a person’s perfume or soap. Sun tanning parlors have become an important and dangerous source of ultraviolet light. Using sun tanning parlor lights damage the skin as much as going into natural sunlight.
Dr. Kaminester is an expert on this subject and has been interviewed on CNN as well as written articles about sun protection. He can suggest sunscreens with particular ingredients that would be best for your individual purposes; options include physical vs. chemical sunscreens, tinted vs. clear, cream vs. lotion vs. spray, water resistant, blocking UVA as well as UVB, etc. The patient will be informed as to which might be best for him or her. Dr. K. discourages the use of sun tanning parlors and was the first dermatologist to write about their dangers in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
See the section in this website on sun protection.
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