What To Do about the Sun - Skin Cancer Awareness Month

Did you know that May is Skin Cancer Awareness Month?! In today’s blog post we wanted to highlight a few ways that will help to prevent and protect you from sun damage. But first, were you aware that the incidence of skin cancer has increased in Canada at a constant rate over the past 30 years?! Based on current rates, 1 in 73 Canadian women will develop melanoma during their lifetime while one in 59 Canadian men will develop the disease.

Skin Cancer is one of the most preventable types of cancer in the world. But how do we prevent skin cancer? Well, by protecting your skin from sun damage! It is advised to use sunscreen at all times. With the help of Sunscreen, a little shade, and some time in-doors, your chances of getting skin cancer greatly diminish.

First off let’s chat about photo aging. Photo aging is the process of sun prematurely aging your skin. There are 4 things that happen when the sun strikes your skin.

Free radical damage

Inflammation

Glycation

DNA Damage

Put these 4 things together and voila- a concoction of epithelial(skin) damage that could eventually lead to skin cancer.

Let’s talk quickly about the different types of rays that actually lead to photoaging. First off there are UVA rays which are a much higher energy and longer rays that penetrate deeply. They a9ffect the cellular areas of the skin and create inflammation. They damage the skin and cause a persistent low level of inflammation. UVB is the shorter rays so they don’t penetrate deeply, but they are responsible for Sun burns that lead to cell damage and sun spots.

So how do we make sure that we’re getting the proper sun protection? You may have heard of Broad spectrum sunscreen? This means that this specific sunscreen meets FDA criteria to protect your skin against UVA as well as UVB rays from damaging the skin and therefore protects against photoaging and skin cancer!

But what happens if it’s already too late? You were out on the weekend working in the yard and forgot to reapply your sunscreen, or you had a backyard BBQ and you got a little too toasty. For any situation planning ahead is always ideal, but if you are noticing sun spots from too much time in the sun, then you might want to look at having our IPL treatments here at Bare Envy! What is IPL you may ask? IPL is a laser treatment that uses a specific wavelength to directly affect the skins tissue. IPL has and continues to provide people with a great way to treat pre-cancerous lesions like sunspots. Our Alma laser treats these lesions by targeting melanin (which leads to dark pigmentation) and red tones with light energy. This energy heats the concentrated areas of redness and pigmentation, causing them to fragment or break up and sloughed off or be absorbed by the body.

Whether you are looking to treat your sun affected skin, or you are simply looking for a great SPF, Bare Envy Laser and Massage is always happy to provide free skin consultations to find a treatment that will suit your needs best.