8 Natural Ways to Prevent a Sunburn (And Sunscreen’s Not One of Them)
As summer descends upon the world, a young Primal eater’s fancy turns to playful frolicking in the sunshine. And when you’re frolicking, the last thing you want to do is slather a bunch of horrible-smelling, greasy, overpriced sunblock all over your body. It makes you slippery and imbues your countenance with a deathly pallor that is very unbecoming. If you could, you’d love to avoid the nasty practice altogether. You’d love to use more alternative methods. Methods that may not have the support of the medical community, but for which supportive research does exist. Seeing as how a common refrain throughout the newly Primal is that sunburns seem fewer and further between than ever before, I’m guessing that there’s something to it. Dietary? Supplementary?
I’ve noticed the same thing in myself and my family, so I got to wondering: what about going Primal, exactly, might be having this effect? And if something is protecting us from the sun, and it’s not just in everyone’s heads, what else can we do to bolster our natural sunblock? What can we recommend to friends and family who aren’t quite on board with the whole deal but still want protection from the sun? Let’s take a look at some potential supplements and dietary strategies. I’ll reference research as often as possible, but I’ll also draw on anecdotal experience, both personal and from the community at large.
Eat Some Lycopene
Lycopene, that famous carotenoid found in tomatoes, has been shown in a recent in vivo RCT to protect humans against sun damage. Healthy women, aged 21-47, who ate 55 g of tomato paste containing 16 mg of lycopene every day for 12 weeks experienced significant protection against acute – and potentially long term – sun damage. Remember that cooked tomatoes, and tomato products like paste and sauce, offer far more bioavailable lycopene than raw tomatoes. If you’re counting, 55 grams of tomato paste is a hair over 3 tablespoons worth.
Get Some Astaxanthin
The super-antioxidant astaxanthin is found in algae, the organisms that eat it, and the organisms that eat those organisms (like salmon, shrimp, and pink flamingo – the pink/red color gives it away). It has been getting some attention as an “internal sunscreen.” Does it stack up? Well, here’s a study on isolated human skin cells, in which astaxanthin definitely protects against UVA damage. And here’s another study on isolated skin cells showing its protective effects. But those are limited. Does the effect persist in real life settings? In other words, does ingesting astaxanthin supplements or food that contains astaxanthin offer protection from UVA? This hairless mouse study suggests that it might; astaxanthin was more effective than even retinol. I’d say it looks promising, and I’m always interested in an excuse to dine on pink flamingo thigh.
Get Some Vitamin D
A common anecdotal report is that supplementing vitamin D increases sun tolerance and protection against sun damage, and a recent study seems to confirm this. Various forms of the vitamin D prohormone offered various protections against UV damage in a mouse model: reduced sunburn, lowered incidence of tumor development. Huh, imagine that! Getting sun gives you vitamin D, which in turn protects you from too much sun. It’s funny how these things work out. Nature can be very elegant.
Get Your Long-Chain Omega-3s and Ditch the Omega-6s
A recent study out of Australia found that adults with the highest serum concentrations of DHA and EPA had the least “cutaneous p53 expression.” What’s the significance of cutaneous p53 expression? When your skin is in danger of damage from the sun, p53 expression is upregulated to protect it, and high p53 immunoreactivity can lead to melanoma. The fact that high DHA/EPA meant low p53 immunoreactivity suggests that the omega-3s were protecting the skin. And although the study’s authors noted that high serum omega-6 content didn’t seem to correlate with high p53 activity, I think a likelier explanation is this: omega-6 is so prevalent in the modern Australian diet, that even “low” levels are still above the threshold for increased susceptibility to sunburn. Going higher than that threshold won’t make things any worse, and it won’t show up in the statistics. Drop that omega-6 intake to 2% of calories, though, while getting an equal amount of omega-3s? I bet you’d see some incredible UV-resistance.
Eat Plenty of Saturated Fat
This is slightly redundant in light of the last suggestion – after all, if you’re limiting PUFAs, you gotta eat some saturated fat – but I think it’s worth mentioning. I hear about people bumping up their saturated fat intake and improving their UV-resistance all over the place, and I’ve experienced the same thing myself, but I’d never seen it mentioned in the literature. Well, here’s a cool rodent study in which mice were either given a saturated fat-enriched diet or a PUFA-enriched diet. No word on the exact composition of the two diets. When both groups of mice were injected with melanoma cells, “the initiation time required for visible tumor growth in mice receiving the polyunsaturated fat diet was significantly less than that in mice receiving the saturated fat diet.” A higher-saturated fat diet was protective, while a higher-PUFA diet was not. If you’re gonna be out in the sun, better eat your butter, palm oil, and coconut oil, eh?
Drink Tea
Tea, especially green tea, offers a complex arsenal of antioxidant compounds. How it works and what’s doing it isn’t fully understood, but it’s generally accepted that drinking green tea is a smart move and a mainstay of many healthy traditional cultures. Unsurprisingly, there’s also evidence that dietary green tea, specifically its polyphenols, inhibit the development of skin tumors by controlling inflammation and preventing DNA damage. Topical green tea extracts applied directly to the skin also offer photoprotection.
Get Some Proanthocyanidins
Proanthocyanidins, which can be found in wine and grape seeds, berries like blueberries and chokeberries, nuts like hazelnuts and pistachios, and certain niche grains like sorghum and barley, have been efficacious in preventing UV damage in hairless rodents. Whether it works for hairless apes remains to be seen, but drinking wine and eating berries sound like fine ideas regardless of their photoprotective efficacy. Actually, score one for the hairless apes who quaff wine: a recent study found that people who supplemented with grape seed extract (high in anthocyanidins) had a significantly lower risk of skin cancer. It sounds promising.
Consider Resveratrol
Resveratrol gets a lot of publicity for its possible anti-cancer, cardioprotective, and lifespan enhancing qualities, but it’s also gaining steam as a potential photoprotective agent. This study found that once incorporated into skin cells, resveratrol protected them from UV damage. Topical resveratrol seems viable, too, but I can imagine rubbing resveratrol into your sun-exposed skin would get expensive rather quickly.
Well, that’s what I came up with. I think the first four appear to be the most effective, but if you have a real problem with burning, it might be worth checking out all the strategies I mentioned. I’m also interested in what’s worked for you. Have you tried the above methods? Did they work? Fill us in and thanks for reading!
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Posted By: Mark Sisson
I take mushroom pills which are cheap at swanson .com, maybe cheaper elsewhere but don’t know. I think these are very good for immune system – haven’t gotten sick since taken them. Since excellent at improving immune system I think also very good anti-cancer supplement.
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This is incredible . . . For the first time in my life, I haven’t been sunburnt this summer (as I have very fair skin)I have been eating primal for the last three months and supplementing with 5000 units of vitamin D, Resveratrol — No sunburn at all this summer and I am out in the sun more than ever! I am actually tanning for once — I wondered what the deal was until I saw this article . . . Thanks Primal Blueprint!
I live in phoenix and the sun here is strooong..
I have been eating tomatoes every day, but I just got some sea vegetables yesterday. I love seaweed and need to add those into my regular diet! thanks for the post!
anyway a quick question, i never get sunburn ever in my life. (i am thai so those melatonin under my skin works really well). But would eating these kinda food help preventing getting ‘too’ dark or just preventing sunburn– just curious
Some reasonable points regarding general dietary antioxidant protection, but it’s sensationally misleading to suggest as done in your headline that dietary antioxidants will prevent sunburn for the following reasons:
1. All the studies you cite utilize much higher concentrations of antioxidants than are dietarily bioavailable to human skin. These studies’ real relevance to sunburn prevention is minimal. Some demonstrate antioxidant protection, which is only part of the sunburn story.
2. The relative quanta of damage that occurs to skin during exposure to sunlight is a massively higher number than the protective effects of dietary anything. Even wearing a quality zinc oxide sunscreen can result in sunburn because sunscreens ‘screen’ or filter sunlight, they do not block it entirely.
If you wished to be truly responsible in your recommendations about sunburn prevention, you should omit the sensationalism and incorporate other modes of protection. Using a quality petrochemical-free, zinc oxide sunscreen and staying in the shade should be on your list of ways to reduce the risk of sunburn and longer term UV damge.
It’s good to keep in mind that correlation and cause are entirely different animals. Too few do.
From a reputable Dr’s website:
Few health recommendations have had as damaging an effect as the advice that you should never leave your house without sunscreen. Wearing sunscreen effectively blocks your body’s production of vitamin D, which happens naturally when your skin is exposed to sunlight. In fact, sunscreens reduce vitamin D production by as much as 97.5 to 99.9 percent.
The widespread acceptance and adoption of this faulty doctrine has contributed to severe vitamin D deficiency on a grand scale, which in turn claims about one million lives a year from 16 different types of cancer and other common diseases such as:
– Heart disease
– Diabetes
– Inflammatory bowel disease
– Rheumatoid arthritis
– Multiple sclerosis and osteoporosis
However, that’s not to say that sunlight can’t be harmful. Of course it can be. Anyone who has ever gotten a sunburn knows that sunlight, at a high intensity over a long enough period, most certainly can damage your skin.
But how can you protect yourself from overexposure SAFELY?
From the research by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), we now have further proof that a very large portion of commercially available sunscreens are NOT safe to use, do NOT last as long as promised, and may NOT protect you from the most damaging rays of the sun.
In fact, many of them give you a false sense of security that encourages excessive sun exposure and can lead to skin damage. They’re also likely carcinogens all by themselves!
Wow. Triple health hazards for the price of one!
Ultraviolet light from the sun comes in two main wavelengths – UVA and UVB. It’s important for you to understand the difference between them, and your risk factors from each.
Consider UVB the ‘good guy’ that helps your skin produce vitamin D. UVA is considered the ‘bad guy’ because it penetrates your skin more deeply and causes more free radical damage. Not only that, but UVA rays are quite constant during ALL hours of daylight, throughout the entire year — unlike UVB, which are low in morning and evening, and high at midday.
If you’ve ever gotten a scorching sunburn on a cloudy day, you now understand why; it’s from the deeply penetrating UVA!
Since UVA’s are inherently more damaging, AND persistently high during all daylight hours, wearing a sunscreen that doesn’t protect you from UVA is going to give you virtually no benefit, and be detrimental to your overall health.
Two non-toxic ingredients that scatter both UVB and the more damaging UVA rays are titanium dioxide and zinc oxide. They’ve been used all over the world for over 75 years as safe sunscreens.
A study in the April 2004 Journal of Chromatography found that there was significant penetration into the skin of all sunscreen agents they studied. And slathering a carcinogenic agent onto your skin may in fact be worse for your health than ingesting it, as it goes straight into your blood stream.
By following experts’ recommendations to apply generous amounts of sunscreen every few hours to prevent skin cancer, you are likely absorbing a fair amount.
Making matters worse, scientists are not even sure whether sunscreen prevents against melanoma in the first place. They’ve suggested that sunscreen may prevent sunburn, but may fail to actually protect against cancer because most sunscreens only screen out UVB, which makes vitamin D, not the UVA that causes most of the damage.
Some studies have even found a link between melanoma and the use of commercial sunscreen! Additionally, potentially harmful chemicals such as dioxybenzone and oxybenzone are some of the most powerful free radical enerators known to man. And yet other studies have linked specific chemical UV filters with the transsexualization of male fish and coral reef degradation.
In light of that, I believe it’s imperative to do your homework, and to ONLY use a natural sunscreen with safe, non-toxic ingredients, so as to not add to your toxic load, and perhaps still not be protected from damaging UVA.
As you can see from this list, compiled from the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep website, there are lots of potential dangers lurking in your sunscreens.
Fortunately, there ARE all-natural ways to protect yourself from sunburn that you can use instead of resorting to the toxic infusions of commercial sunscreens. The most obvious and safest option is to put on a long sleeved shirt, pants and a hat once you’ve reached your limit of sun exposure (you can tell you’ve had enough right when your skin turns the lightest shade of pink).
At this point, I’m sure you’d agree that commercial sunscreens are out of the question.
Your next best bet is to find an all-natural, non-chemical sunscreen. There are several on the market.
The only proven safe ingredients are the UVA/UVB-protecting titanium dioxide and zinc oxide. Your choice of sunscreen might also include any or all of the following all-natural ingredients such as:
– Sunflower oil
– Vitamins A, D and E
– Coconut oil
– Jojoba oil
– Shea butter
– Eucalyptus oil
I have become aware that all teas pull enormous amounts of fluoride out of the soil. A typical cup of tea contains 6mg of fluoride.
Fluoride: The Bizarre History – Full Documentary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JFLP5k57Y4&feature=player_embedded
You are correct, however … keep reading! Unfortunately, tea also contains high levels of two toxins, fluoride and aluminum. Studies have shown that little of the aluminum in tea is absorbed by the body because it is bound by catechins (flavonoids) in the tea. Yet, squeezing LEMON in tea dramatically increases aluminum absorption, somewhere close to 700 percent. If you must flavor your tea – use mint instead. The lowest levels of both of these toxins are found in white tea, the highest levels in black tea. Green Tea is in-between black and white tea. Same plant, different stages of being harvested.
Brick tea, which is made from black tea using both the leaves and the stems, has tremendously high levels of fluoride, so high that it regularly causes luorosis, which can destroy the skeleton, teeth and can even damage organs, including the brain.
Both toxins (Flouride and aluminum) are absorbed from the oil, and the tea plant has a unique ability to concentrate them within its leaves. High levels of these two toxins in the soil are a particular problem with tea grown in India and communist China. White tea, because it is harvested earlier than other forms of tea and is inimally processed, has a higher concentration of catechins, quercetin, and other nutrients. It also has far less fluoride and aluminum.
Seriously??? Are you actually proposing that people try these things? If you want to avoid sunburn, keep out of the sun! It’s completely irresponsible to suggest that people can avoid the potentially fatal implications of too much sun exposure by these unproven anecdotal “preventatives”!
Mark,
The best way to avoid a sunburn is to take plenty of Vitamin C prior to sunning. You will just tan instead of burning. Try it!
Obviously not from Australia where:
Australia has the highest skin cancer incidence rate in the world.
Australians are four times more likely to develop a skin cancer than any other form of cancer.
Approximately two in three Australians will be diagnosed with skin cancer before the age of 70.
(http://www.health.gov.au/internet/skincancer/publishing.nsf/Content/fact-2)
To avoid skin cancer wear a shirt, sunscreen, hat, and avoid the sun. Suppliments may protect your urine from the sun but there is no evidence of this.
I think you missed out ‘RICE’. In South East Asia, traditionally people use rice powder paste as their sunblock. It’s calming the skin and it has SPF (I have no idea how much). Ever since I move back to SEA 3 years ago, I only use rice powder mixed with water for my face daily, unless I go to fancy party then I use foundation and Western branded make up. I heard SK-II a branded skin prod. from Japan uses rice based too to fight aging. I think rice paste works for the aging too.. people thought my mom and I are at least 10 years younger.
I can’t find the video, but I saw one a few years ago that showed topical vitamin C reduced sun damage by 30%. It’s also good for your skin in general. You can make it at home (must be fresh, only lasts a few days refrigerated) from vitamin C crystals.
I used to burn badly but haven’t in years, including 2 months living in Mexico, trips to SE Asia and Europe in the summer. My main advice:
- build up a base tan. Limit your time in the sun until you have
- eat primal, supplement with vitamin D
- coconut oil seemed to be effective sunscreen when I was in Mexico
Resveratrol.
I started taking a high quality one (the one that was used in the famous study) this past summer 2011.
I didn’t suffer from sunburn when I did not use any sunscreen.
And I’m talkin about sun exposure on the beach for 7 days straight- 6 hours a day from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m..
Now that I read this article my thoughts were confirmed that it must have been the resveratrol.
I wasn’t even looking for that benefit, but I noticed that no matter how much sun exposure I got- it never set in the next day like it always did the many years before.
Almost like I was impervious to it.
Remarkable.
According to William Dufty in his book “Sugar Blues” avoiding sugar [and I assume he also means foods that convert to glucose quickly ie: grain based foods]decreases the incidents of sunburn…paleo/primal diet is low sugar/carb/starch…so I would suggest sunburn is a diagnostic tool telling you that you still are still having too much sugar/starch/carb.
I found out the hard way that hydrating/foods werent enough. Regular sunscreens would severely irritate my skin but i’ve had alot of success preventing sunburn with coconut oil. http://coconutoilinformation.com/coconut-oil-homemade-sunscreen-recipe/ has the best recipe i’ve found.
Great article btw!
Hey all,
Mark- Great article. I fully believe that diet is tied to sun tolerance, and since going Paleo I’ve noticed that it takes me much longer to burn, if at all.
Just to add my 2 cents, I’ve found that using raw unrefined shea butter has helped my skin tremendously while in the sun. It has a natural SPF of 1-3, which just means that you have to reapply it more often – a common misconception about SPF is that it simply means stronger protection, whereas higher SPF actually means (supposedly) that one must reapply it less often. So, shea butter is a good all-natural sun protection, and it’s full of vitamin E and is a good fat to put on your skin in my opinion.
That’s not exactly correct, you’ve misinterpreted the fact that a higher SPF means you can stay in the sun longer without burning…
The reason you can stay in the sun longer with a higher SPF is that it filters a higher percentage of UVB.
In general:
SPF 2 blocks 50 percent of UVB rays
SPF 4 blocks 75 percent of UVB rays
SPF 8 blocks 87 percent of UVB rays
SPF 15 blocks 93 percent of UVB rays
SPF 30 blocks 97 percent of UVB rays
SPF 50 blocks 98 percent of UVB rays
SPF 100 blocks 99 percent of UVB rays
Sun exposure is cumulative so two hours at 50% sun is the same as one hour at 100% sun, so to speak.
So, if you normally burn in 1 hour w/o sunscreen then if you wear SPF 2 you can go 2 hours before burning.
It doesn’t matter you reapply every 30 minutes, if you use SPF 2 you are still only filtering 50% of the UVB and you will burn in twice the amount of time it takes you to burn w/o sunscreen.
You have to reapply to keep the SPF at full strength, but it does not extend the amount of time you can stay in the sun beyond what the SPF factor itself allows.
Hope that makes sense and helps!
And of course this really says nothing about nasty UVA, which needs to be addressed separately from burning.
It’s also important to note that the scale is logarithmic in nature. Is 99% really that much better than 93% or even 87%? No, not really, not unless you’re in a heated transparent dome in the arctic circle spending 24 hours a day nude baking in the full sun!
Actually, the UV index is not very high at that lattitude, so no, not even then!
This is why any SPF above about ~5 will prevent *most* people from burning during an average day at the beach, provided it’s reapplied frequently enough to keep it at full effectiveness.
Whenever I go to the beach to play beach volleyball I always get burned even when I put sun screen on. Now that it is summer I will try out these tips and see if they work for me. Thanks.
I think it probably has something to do with the higher antioxidant load in general that you get with a primal diet. All those synergistic compounds from vegies and fruits must have some protective effect against oxidative damage.
Conversely the lower levels of proinflammatory chemicals from not eating grains, omega 6′s etc reduce the potential inflammatory effects from sun damage also.
Homeopathically speaking, and without using a remedy, the fastest way to get rid of a burn is with heat. Like cures Like. Heat cures heat. So, for a sunburn or any other burn, bathe (under running water) the affected area in hot water, as hot as you can stand without causing further damage. You will notice almost instant relief. For an all-over burn, take a HOT shower.
Dr. Mercola wrote a book about the sun. I was still getting his newsletter before the book came out. He put a lot of it in the newsletters including eating grain free, omega 6:3 balance, and saturated fat. Last year, I read a comment on a blog where a woman said she goes to her beach house every summer. When she added a few tablespoons a day of red palm oil as a supplement, she didn’t burn. I was inspired and bought some from wilderness family naturals. (I’m a sucker for testimonials…..) I googled what she said and I haven’t seen it anywhere. Thanks for writing about it!
I read of a study a few years ago that said wearing sunglasses puts you at risk for more sunburn. Because the body is one whole unit, the light coming into the eyes warns the skin about the light it is receiving. If you are wearing sunglasses, your skin thinks it is in the shade and doesn’t protect itself. Skin also has light receptors but wearing shades makes a difference. Our eyes need full spectrum light as well. I try to limit sunglasses for driving. When I go out for the day I use a visor or a hat.
Great post! I must add though, that green tea contains so much fluoride that it should be consumed with caution, if at all.
So I’ve been doing the omega3, vit D and saturated fat for a while now, more so recently. I just added 10 mg lycopene and 4 mg astaxanthin and now not only do I not burn but I can’t seem to add any color either! It’s amazing. One hour per side lounging in full sun (UV Index ~7) and I can’t even tell the difference! Guess I need to cut back on the new supplements because I want to get a little more color. lol
I am just completely shocked at how well this works!
Now, to play devil’s advocate… and this may be a dumb question, but just because we don’t burn anymore or even tan that well, does that mean we are protected from all the harmful effects of UV and the skin cancer risks? Or are we just preventing the obvious symptoms that warn us of the damage?
It’s also important to note that the scale is logarithmic in nature. Is 99% really that much better than 93% or even 87%? No, not really, not unless you’re in a heated transparent dome in the arctic circle spending 24 hours a day nude baking in the full sun!
Actually, the UV index is not very high at that latitude, so no, not even then!
This is why any SPF above about ~5 will prevent *most* people from burning during an average day at the beach, provided it’s reapplied frequently enough to keep it at full effectiveness.
Number 9 – Sunbathe Naked ?
Our family lives right on the beach in Sydney, but we mostly prefer to go to a nude beach about 30min away….What is really strange is that we have started to notice that when sunbathing nude we all seem to have more tolerance to sun.
We first noticed this recently when one of our two daughters decided to keep her dress on, while the rest of us completely nude. The 3 nudies were fine while the one wearing the dress got quite sunburned much to our surprise.
We’ve been watching more closely to see if there is a correlation and while it’s only been a few weeks, it seems quite a noticeable difference for all of us.
We also started noticing that the worst burn always seems to be right next to bather lines. Given that we tan naked a lot and wear different bathers often, we don’t have much in the way of tan lines.
We are wondering if our skin has a natural defense to the sun and bathers confuse the skins defense system.
Wondering if anyone else has similar experience or observations ?
I think this really depends on where you live – I am very fair skinned and where I live there is a 3-4min burn time. It is very dangerous to repeatedly go out in the sun without protection – whether that is shade or sunblock.
Skin Cancer is one of the most prevalent cancers in my country – because people go out without assessing the risk to their skin.