Skin safety tips for the summer

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – With pools now open and the summer season underway, it’s important to make sure your skin stays safe. One way to protect yourself is to avoid tanning salons.

“We generally try to avoid tanning beds; definitely very detrimental to the skin. And there’s some research talking about tanning bed addiction. Also, the social is a little bit up in the air right now, but people are talking about it now,” Dr. Diego Cabrera, Oncologist at Med Center Health says.

To keep track of how damaging the sun may be on a particular day, make sure to check the ultraviolet, or UV level, on your phone’s weather app.

“A low is usually less than two. Moderate to high is 3 to 7, usually moderate to high. You got to be really cautious about it. And then there’s more than that. But when you start when you see a three or above, you’ve got to start taking these precautions to prevent burning,” Cabrera says.

The most common way to prevent damage is to use sunscreen on yourself, but especially on children.

“Any child, no matter their amount of melanin, needs to protect their skin with some type of sunscreen, at least 30 SPF and it needs to have both UVA and UVB protection,” Dr. Kelly Kries, Pediatrician with Bowling Green Internal Medicine and Pediatrics says.

If you do end up getting burned, here’s the best thing to apply to the area.

“Apply like a cool compress to the skin. If it’s a mild sunburn, just a cool compress can help. And then applying a moisturizer that has aloe vera in it, you want to avoid things that can hold in heat like a petroleum based moisturizer,” Kries says.