Freakishly Pale

I apologize to the readers for the lack of updates. I’ve been out of town interviewing for jobs and my internet access has been limited.

Only two short notes for today. The first is an article about Pennsylvania looking to regulate teenagers’ access to tanning salons.

The second is an article from the UK discussing the need to protect children’s skin from sun damage.

A child’s skin is much thinner than an adult’s and children are therefore more prone to skin damage and sunburn. This carries well documented risks including skin cancer and premature aging.

Protecting children is especially important at the seaside where sunlight is reflected and intensified by sand and water. Most skin cancers are caused by damage from ultraviolet (UV) rays in sunlight or from sun beds. The most important thing to remember is that too much sun, especially if it leads to burning, can be dangerous.

For readers in the Pittsburgh area, there will be a free skin cancer screening put on by the University of Pittsburgh on July 21st. Check out this article for more info.

According to this article, blackberry extract may help minimize sun damage to skin.

When black-raspberry extract — which is loaded with antioxidants — is rubbed on the skin, it appears to stop skin from swelling into a sunburn, and it actually stopped tumors from forming in mice.

“Things that you wouldn’t normally expect, like raspberries and skin cancer, who would have ever thought? But it really opens people’s minds to alternatives,” says F. Jason Duncan, another skin-cancer researcher.

And this new research into antioxidants and sunburns could particularly benefit men.

“Men actually seem to be more sensitive to sunlight but in a different way than women,” says cancer researcher Tatiana Oberysyn.

Research in male mice revealed they have much lower cancer-preventing antioxidants in their skin.

On an unrelated note, I’d like to address the readers of Freakishly Pale. For the most part, comments left on freakishly pale have been positive and informative and I try to include good information left by the readers in the blog. However there are two problems. The first is that some comments with links included are being dropped into the spam filter by WordPress. If you posted a comment that you felt should have been approved, please leave me a comment on this post, and I will check and see if it’s still in the spam queue, or if it has been deleted altogether.

Secondly, I need to address rude comments. I will not approve them. Period. I’m sure someone will be personally offended and upset that I don’t automatically approve all comments, but this blog is about information, and rude comments are completely unnecessary. I will happily include and approve comments that add to anything posted here, but if your comment is rude, it will not be approved.

I received a comment yesterday asking me what the best sunscreen to use to prevent “African American Incidental (UV) Transference.” There is no such syndrome, and frankly I’m offended that someone is trying to use this blog to push their racist agenda.

The few sites that mention this completely illogical imaginary problem claim that the leading cause of skin cancer is UV radiation that comes off African American skin while indoors. Even more outrageously, it apparently specifically targets white skin. I found about 10 links referring to it. The majority of these were references on blogs and forums, where all of the writers suspiciously used almost the exact same wording, which leads me to believe they were written by the same person in an effort to further this idiotic idea. The one site that claims to be the origin of this information is supposedly written by a dermatologist who “disavowed his oath” to bring this information to the public. It’s another wordpress blog that contains only two posts and absolutely no scientific explanation as to how this mysterious illness works.

It is not real. It doesn’t even scientifically make sense. Humans do not store UV rays in their original form in order to release them later on. The body converts UV light to vitamin D. They can’t magically convert it back and start shooting UV rays at their coworkers like some kind of biological death ray. This is some idiot’s attempt at trying to manufacture a medical reason to be racist.

I’ll quote Zen Curmudgeon over at the Chieftain Daily forums:

There’s no ICD-9-CM code for it and the American Academy of Dermatology hasn’t heard of it, either. A google on the term produces a few hits, all on non-medical sites and all having remarkably similar language, likely taken from an overtly racist blog started last month and purportedly written by a dermatologist named “Dr. Mark Skinner”. (The AAD hasn’t heard of him either.)

I will not pander to this nonsense. Comments referring to overtly offensive and blatently fake issues like this will be deleted from this point on. Anyone who believes this crap is either the most gullible person I’ve ever met, or they are racist and looking for an excuse to remain so. Please take it somewhere else.

It would seem that the European Union is looking to make consumers more aware of just what their sunscreen does for them. They are looking to ban misleading terms like “Total Protection” on sunscreen labels.

IRISH holidaymakers who think that a bottle of sunscreen is protection enough from skin cancer are to get special health warnings from today.

The European Commission in Brussels will unveil new rules for labelling and logos on sun lotion bottles which will ban misleading terms such as “sunblocker” or “total protection”.

The rules will be supported by a major leafleting and advertising campaign explaining why there are several reasons sunscreen products should be only one out of a number of measures necessary to protect people from the UV radiation of the sun.

I generally try to avoid linking to other blogs for anything other than biographies and personal experiences, because it’s the internet equivalent of saying you heard something from a friend of a friend, but there is a very nice, and well cited post on the Women 4 Hope blog addressing skin cancer prevention and the tendency of people to rely too much on sunscreen.

I’ll give you a mini summary, which is reflected in posts I’ve made previously about SPF and such, but maybe I have not been so clear about it: You should not rely solely on sunscreen to prevent skin cancer. It does not block 100% of UV rays. It is definitely helpful, but it is not infallible. Wearing sunscreen does not give you license to spend 12 hours a day in the sun with no damage to your skin. Ideally you should minimize your sun exposure to prevent any kind of damage. This is why UV resistant clothing is being recommended more and more frequently. Try to stay out of th sun during peak hours, 10am to 4pm.

Also, you should not limit sunscreen use to only when you spend extensive amounts of time in the sun. You are exposed daily to UV rays, and yet most people don’t have a daily sunscreen regimen. Those minutes from your car to your office add up over the years.

Wow, traffic to this site almost tripled yesterday. Hello to new readers.

Now anyone who has fair skin is probably quite familiar with what UV is and how it affects our daily lives, but it seems that very few people are aware of the UV index.

To quote the wikipedia definition:

The UV index is an international standard measurement of how strong the ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun is at a particular place on a particular day.

You can find the daily report for the United States on The Weather Channel’s website, or for Europe on their UK site, and there is a nice, simple recommendation chart on StormFax, explaining the recommended preventative measures to take depending on the UV Index. I think it’s particularly important to note that they recommend applying sunscreen more frequently than the SPF would have you believe, particularly when the UV index is high. The reason is that when the UV Index is high, you are being exposed to more UV rays during the same amount of time. Were you to go without sunscreen, you would burn faster than on days where the UV index is low. Therefore, in order to maintain protection, you must apply sunscreen more frequently.

And for the very sun-conscious or those who just want to be amused by unusual UV protective products, I have two for you. The first is the driving sleeve that is sold by sunprotection.com. That’s right, I said driving sleeve. It’s a detached sleeve designed to be worn while driving to prevent sun exposure while driving. I assume this would be particularly good for driving long distances and those who don’t have their windows tinted with anti-UV tint.

Also, for the mother who tires of carrying her baby in her arms, we have the Moby Wrap Baby Carrier with UV Protection. I’ll admit, this one seems fairly useless as a UV protector, given that the babies limbs are completely uncovered, but there you have it.

Bren Cosmetics has a line of creme color correctors, including white and light variations.

If your not prone to breakouts and can handle heavier cosmetics, Mehron has several lines of stage makeup, including one called celebre that they claim can be worn everyday.  That line includes both very light fleshtones and a white variation that could be blended with natural tones.

I have found another white base foundation that could be blended with other cosmetics to get a lighter tone. It is yet another brand geared towards our pale yet angsty brethren, the goth babies. GoodGoth has a white foundation and a white loose powder, as well as several other colors designed for blending. Included in this is a light (and very pink from the looks of it) foundation that they claim is good for everyday wear.

As with the Manic Panic products, I have not tried these myself, so I can not attest to their quality.

According to this article, there may be a prescription one can take to help repair excessive skin damage caused by UV rays.

Dimericine is in clinical trials and has not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. If approved, it would be available by prescription.

Yarosh, a molecular biologist, says AGI has tested Dimericine in both animals and humans and has demonstrated that it repairs DNA damage caused by sun exposure. That, in turn, helps keep latent skin cancers from developing into the full-blown disease.

Dimericine has been formulated as a lotion and is designed to be applied daily to skin exposed to the sun. It is engineered to penetrate and remain in the epidermis, the outer layer of the skin, Yarosh said, and cannot be washed off.

The lotion delivers a DNA repair enzyme to the nucleus of skin cells and speeds the body’s process for repairing damage.

“Ultraviolet [radiation] is readily absorbed by DNA and causes a very specific chemical change,” Yarosh says.

Also of interest in the same article, they mention that some blue-eyed, fair skinned people have an enhanced ability to repair skin damage (please note the important word:Some. This is not an invitation for all those with baby blues to go frying their skin.) .