Ep 204 – The Rogue Pharmacist: Sunscreen Safety—The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

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Lamb Probe can empower your skin practice with these new and highly in-demand services. For more information, visit lambprobe.com. That's L-A-M-P-R-O-B-E.com and follow Lamb Probe on social media at Lamb Probe. Hello and welcome to ASCP on the Rogue Pharmacist with Benjamin Knight Fuchs. In each episode, we will explore how internal and external factors can impact the skin. I'm Maggie Stasek, ASCP's education program manager, and joining me is Ben Fuchs skin care formulator and pharmacist. Hey, Ben. Hey, Maggie. How you doing? I'm doing good. Nice to see you. Yeah, nice to see you. So we're talking about sunscreen safety today, and I think both esthetician and consumer are their top concepts of sun protection, and I'd like to think they all know the basics, but there's still a lot of misconceptions, especially when it comes to sunscreen safety. So love the sun. Love the sun. Do you know everything we eat is we eat because we want we're trying to get the sun. Food is packed sunlight. In fact, everything that's packed sunlight, reality is packed sunlight, but when we eat foods, we're eating basically to get the energy from the sun in different forms. Vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbs, all the nutrients that are in foods are substances that initially came from the sun. The sun is the source of life, and it always struck me as ironic that the sun has been so demonized because of its power and its potency, and yes, you don't want to burn your skin, but the sun is really important for growing, for healing, for neuro transmission, and brain health, and mood, and so many benefits to getting a good amount of sun. Everybody knows about vitamin D, of course, but there's a lot of reasons why you want to get regular exposure to the sun, regular exposure to the sun covering your whole body. Nonetheless, the sun is powerful, and it can speed up chemistry, accelerate aging, secondarily cause problems with pigmentation, disrupt DNA, and it's associated with aging, so you want to have some respect for the sun. Love the sun, but respect the sun. We've come up with different strategies for protecting the skin from the sun, because we tend in our business obviously, but in our culture, generally, we tend to think of the immediate effects of things, and not the causes of things, the obvious effects of things, and not the causes of things. It seems like we'll put something on top of the skin, and that will protect us from the sun. When it, as it turns out, the best way to protect your skin from the sun is by what you eat. I want you to put in your body, and sun's skin sensitivities oftentimes are the result of either deficiencies in certain things that we're eating, or eating the wrong things, putting the wrong things in our bodies that get deposited in the skin, or not getting the right things in our body that don't get deposited in the skin. For example, the wrong kinds of fats, eating processed fats, can make the skin more sensitive, and can make the barrier weaker and cause more problems with the sun. On the other hand, deficiencies in certain nutrients, antioxidant nutrients, pigments, the greens and the blues and the yellows that protect plants from the sun, deficiencies in these nutrients, or malabsorption of these nutrients, can make the skin more sensitive. If you have skin barrier issues, or we can skin barrier either because of topical things you're doing, maybe exfoliations, strategies that you're using, or you're not getting enough essential fatty acids, or the B vitamins, particularly nice, and your barrier might be weaker, and then your skin's going to be more sensitive to the sun, and you'll think it's the sun that's causing the problems when it's your weakened barrier. There's things that we should be doing internally to protect our skin from the sun, and that should make sense when you think about the skin as an organ. We always say the skin is the body's largest organ, right? What does that really mean? The skin is in many ways like the heart, or the spleen, or the liver, or the intestine, and it's strength, and it's resilience, and it's healing properties, and it's health in general, are dependent on what we eat. That makes sense for your heart. That makes sense for your intestine. Why shouldn't it make sense for your skin, too? When you talk about sun protection, or the dangers of the sun, we really want to start to focus more internally on what we're putting inside our body, we should be putting inside our body than we're not, or what we are putting inside our body that we shouldn't be. That's number one. There's lots of ways to protect your skin from the sun internally, and we should be doing that. If you want a really quick hack, think i-vitamins. I think I've told you about this before. Yeah, occupied or something? Yeah, there's a lot of different i-vitamins out now. I like one called Occutive and Vision FX. There's also Occupy. That's the standard one, but now there's a few different brands. They protect their design to protect your eyes from the sun. If you look at the ingredient deck on these nutritional supplements for the eyes, you'll see things like torine, anacetylcystine, vitamin C, vitamin E, carotenoise, like lutein and zosanthine, and they protect the eyes from the sun, macular degeneration in particular, is an eye disease that's caused by sun damage, but the same kind of protection that you get for your eyes, you'll get for your skin. That's really important. If you're going to go out tanning, or you're going to summertime, or you're going to go out on cruise, or you're playing a lot of tennis, or golf, and you're out in the sun a lot, take an eye vitamin. You'll notice that you're burning much less readily, and you're protecting your skin from the effects of aging. Yeah, I'm having a hard time processing this because so I am very, very fair. If I go into the sun, I'm going to burn within five, ten minutes. So what I'm hearing from you is if I am taking in certain nutrients, that burning is not going to happen as readily, as readily as readily. So that doesn't change the fact that I'm still very fair. Correct. So I am having a hard time processing the sun rays hitting my fair, fair skin, and no burning happening. Well, the burning, the effects of the sun, the redness will say more than the burning. You definitely don't want to burn your sun, but the redness is the first thing that happens before the burn. The redness will be it'll be prolonged. You'll have a longer period of safety before you start to turn red. Redness is technically the term the word redness is erythema, right? Yeah, yeah. So the redness response to the sun, the minimum erythema response, the MER, are they call it? For somebody who's fair like you might be five or ten minutes, but if you start using these eye vitamins, that MER, that erythema response, maybe 15 or 20 minutes, which means you're going to get the benefits of the sun for ten minutes longer. Send the benefits for the sun as we say, are vitamin D and serotonin, neurotransmitters, healing, antiviral, and stabilizing the growth of cells, etc. You'll get to enjoy those benefits longer. You said safety. So in people's minds, I think they're thinking of I have a tan, which is that pigment is protection. It is. That is my safety. But if I don't tan, then you're going to have less safety. So it's going to be more important. That's the job of melanin. Melanin is a powerfully antioxidant. I absolutely love melanin. There's a lot of melanin inside your body, too, by the way, as much as on the outside of your body. So melanin's main role is not strictly to protect your skin from the sun, but to protect your skin from, or to protect your body from electromagnetic energy. And you have electromagnetic energy in your brain and you find you have melanin in your brain. I remember I did an autopsy on a cadaver in pharmacy school. We had to look at a cadaver. And this was a cadaver of farmer who had been out in the sun a lot. When we opened him up, he had melanoma all inside his body. So there are melanin melanocytes and melanin production inside the body as well as on the outside of the body. So melanin is a general protective molecule on the skin. It does protect you from solar radiation. That's one of its main jobs. And it's really good. It's very good at doing that. The problem is, is before the melanin response hits, like for you, you're going to be subject to damage. And that's why the nutrition is so important. Again, what you're putting in that you should be and what you're not putting in that you shouldn't be. And I'm specifically, it's the trans fats and the and the processed fats and the heated fats are really the biggest problem when it comes to when it comes to eating the wrong foods. Now, there's also the issue of sunscreens themselves. And by the way, the term sunscreen is kind of a really weird term. We used to say sunblocks and sunscreens, right? Sunblocks meaning is things that you cut that cover the skin that paint the skin essentially. And the sun will bounce off these materials. And there's only two zinc oxide and titanium dioxide. And then there's a whole bunch of sunscreens. There's 20 or 30 different sunscreen chemicals. The most common one's called octomythoxycinivate. Today, we don't say, I still say sunblocks and sunscreens, but according to the FDA, sunblocks are now called physical sunscreens. And what I used to call sunscreens are all chemical sunscreens. So we'll just go with that nomenclature. The physical sunscreens are really the way to go because they're basically inert. They don't really do any chemistry to the skin. The chemical sunscreens are incredibly problematic. And if you were, for example, in just one orally, you get very sick because they're toxic. And not only are they toxic when you ingest them internally, but there's evidence to suggest that they maybe toxic when you put them on top of your skin as well, because they are very lipophilic fat soluble and they tend to penetrate into the skin. In fact, the toxicity of sunscreens is so well known that there are places like in Hawaii where they tell you not to wear chemical sunscreens because when you go in the ocean, they come off in the water and they kill the coral. Dermatologists will say, don't use a chemical sunscreen on a baby because baby's skin is very thin. And absorption of the chemical sunscreen is increased through thin skin. And so dermatologists will say put a zinc oxide or titanium dioxide on baby's skin. Well, you know, if it's good, if that's what you're going to do for babies, you should probably do it for everybody in my humble opinion. And on top of everything else, zinc oxide is actually a healing molecule. You can use it to treat sunburn as well as to prevent sunburn. So it's really a no-brainer the way I look at it, although zinc oxide is much harder to formulate with than chemical sunscreens and zinc oxide is also much more expensive than chemical sunscreens, which is probably the biggest problem. And then it also makes you white a little bit unless it's really formulated cleverly and correctly. The sunscreens are very, very problematic. I get into this a lot with sunscreen manufacturers and people who are promoting sunscreen products that is chemical sunscreens because they don't want to hear that. But the fact of the matter is, is they're nasty chemicals. I'm telling you this is a chemist. When I'm working with chemical sunscreens in the pharmacy, I'm wearing gloves, sometimes even a mask. And these are the ingredients that people are rubbing all over their skin. Plus, on top of all of that, there's really a myth about SPF. And first of all, there's mythology around SPF and then there's misunderstanding, even non-understanding them, among lay people. Seticians tend to know what SPF is, but lay people really don't. So what is SPF? SPF is a measurement of how long it takes to get red. So it involves a little bit of math. It's a factor, a multiplication factor that is associated with the time it takes for your skin to get red with a sunscreen and without a sunscreen. So for example, you said your skin takes 10 minutes to get red, right? Without a sunscreen, I'm assuming. If you wear a sunscreen with an SPF of 15, now your skin will get red in 15 times 10 minutes. If you wear a sunscreen that's a 20, SPF of 20, 20 times 10 minutes, SPF of 30 times 10 minutes, these two are going here. So let's say you wear an SPF of 30, right? Now your skin is going to get red in 300 minutes instead of 10 minutes, right? Well, that's five hours. So are you going to really be out on the sun for five hours? I mean, maybe. So reapply because the thing is an SPF of 30 requires you to interact with a lot more chemicals than an SPF of 15. The higher the SPF, the more nasty chemicals you're putting on your skin. These days, there are products that have an SPF of 60 or 90. I've even seen 120. So let's say you wear an SPF of 60. Now you're going to be out on the sun for 10 hours. Well, is that realistic? Are you really going to be out on the sun for 10 hours? So it's best if you're going to use a chemical sunscreen to reapply. Physical sunscreen don't have to worry about that as much. But with a chemical sunscreen, go low SPF reapply. That's my suggestion. And sunscreen safety is something that you really want to pay attention to because sunscreens are among the nastiest chemicals in all of cosmetics. And this is why they're regulated as drugs, by the way. So you're essentially putting a drug on your skin. And you want to have the same respect for that ingredient as you do for a drug. And you want to be very careful. Use a low SPF and don't wear a sunscreen if you don't need one. Tell me if this is not accurate. But in addition to, you know, you're maybe in the water or just rubbing on your skin, which is why you would reapply every two hours. But those sunscreen chemicals when they are exposed to UV rays also start to break down. Not only break down, but they become even more toxic. So yes, they become break. They do break down. They get weaker over time. So it may be that you have an that you have a sunscreen with a certain potency when you put it on. But as over the course of time, as it's reacting with the sun, it's becoming less and less protective, which is another reason why you want to if you're going to really want to protect yourself, reapply. Use a low SPF and reapply. And when you don't need it, take it off. If you're wearing a lotion that has an SPF, but you're not in the sun, why would you put that, you know, you're exposing yourself to chemicals that you don't need? Eye creams, for example, a lot of eye creams that have built in sunscreens to them, you may not need it. Why would you put a chemical on your skin with a known toxicity profile when you don't need it? So the way I look at it when it comes to sunscreens, number one, make sure you're internally correct. Make sure you're using pigments. And if you have malabsorption, by the way, and a lot of people don't absorb their fatty material on a lot of these pigments, the greens and the blues and the yellows, the carotenoids they call them and the things like carotenoids and things like a beta carotenoid and xeosanthene and lutein. You'll see these on eye vitamins. These are very protective against the sun when you eat them orally for the skin. For example, you'll eat lutein in watermelon or in an apple or in papaya. It goes into your body. It goes into your intestine. And in the intestine, bile and pancreatic juices and intestinal contractions are supposed to break open that food that contains the lutein or xeosanthene or whatever it is. And then it goes into the bloodstream. But if you have a gallbladder missing, that's not going to happen. Or it's not going to happen as effectively. Or if you have pancreatic issues, pancreatic insufficiency issues, that's not going to happen as effectively. If you're not making enough stomach acid and a lot of people don't, it's not going to happen as effectively. So that may make your skin more prone towards burning. So if you are going to use nutrition, things like antioxidants and pigments, you want to make sure that you're absorbing them using digestive strategies. If you have poor digestive health, that's going to impact the health of the barrier and the health of the skin and its ability to respond to the sun effectively. And then you're going to say, oh, I need to have an SPF of 50. I need to have an SPF of 40. And what you're doing is you're forcing your skin to have to deal with octom and thoxycinamate and octokrionline and octosolicilate and these very toxic chemicals. So number one, make sure you're using nutritional supplements and eating correctly, using digestive support if you need it, bile salts and digestive enzymes and HCl supplements, hydrochloric acid supplements. And the number two, in my opinion, use zinc oxide. Titanium dioxide is okay, but zinc oxide is healing. In addition to not being toxic, it actually heals the skin. Zinc is a very important mineral for the skin as it turns out. Zinc is involved in the healing process and zinc oxide is a well-known healing ingredient that we use in the pharmacy all the time for treating burns and rashes. It's part of calimine lotion. So why would anybody use a sunscreen or a chemical sunscreen when they have the option of using a physical sunscreen? And that's the way I look at it. That's the best way to do it. So to sum up, love the sun. Don't burn. Be respectful of it. Use internal nutrition and dietary strategies or digestive support strategies if you need and use zinc oxide. That concludes our show for today and we thank you for listening. But if you just can't get enough of Benfoux, the ASCP's rogue pharmacist, you can find him at truthtreatments.com. For more information on this episode or for ways to connect with Benfoux or to learn more about ASCP, check out the show notes.