Sunscreen ingredients! It’s the most important part of buying sunscreen! Please read them! Your skin will thank you! And once you figure it out, it will only take you a second!
Now there are Chemical and Physical sunscreens. You have to pick the one that your skin likes the best! Generally the Chemical sunscreens do have higher UVA protection! Remember UVA 8 is good and 19 is great! Well Physical sunscreens only go up to about 8.
On with the fun part.
Many Chemical sunscreens contain:
Avobenzone, Homosalate, Octisalate, Octocrylene, and Oxybenzone.
Now if the sunscreen contains Avobenzone, make sure that it does NOT contain Octinoxate! It will destablize the suncreen causing it to degrade faster in the sunlight, meaning less protection for your skin! Think of it like octiNOxate!
Many Physical sunscreens contain:
Titanium Dioxide and Zinc Oxide
Make sure that they have both ingredients!
Also look for high percentages of these active ingredients. The higher they are and the certain combination of the ingredients means a higher UVA protection number!
So a chemical sunscreen with Avobenzone 3%, Homosalate 13%, Octisalates 5%, Octocrylene 2%, Oxybenzone 4% has a very good UVA protection of around 11-13. (by the way it’s Coppertone Water Babies spf 50)
So just look for other sunscreens with about these percentages in it and you got yourself a great sunscreen!
There’s also a website that will calculate all the ingredients in any sunscreen and give a estimation of the UVA number! It is usually off by a number or two, but that’s better than nothing!
https://www.ciba.com/ind-pc-uv-sss.htm
Go ahead check it out!
Oh, also once a sunscreen has been opened it will only last for about a year! So all those sunscreens you had in your cabinet since last summer, toss them!
(Money saving tip: Check out your Big Lots store, they have great deals ($2.50 for Ocean Potions and $3.50 for Hawaiian Tropics Baby Faces SPF50) on sunscreens right now!)
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