Sunburned While Skiing

This might seem like a strange winter topic, but if you've ever gotten sunburned skiing, you know what we're talking about.

The common mantra for years has been to use a sunscreen of spf 15 or higher to prevent that burn. And preventing the burn is important to avoiding skin cancer. But as just about anyone around here can tell you, even if you lather on the spf 15 sunscreen, you still might end up a bit red. Here's why---our altitude is too high for just an spf 15 sunscreen---it looks like you might even need something as strong as 70+ to get good protection.

Researchers were trying to find out if our high altitude and sun exposure also meant that some sunscreens might not work as well as we thought they would. They took golfers at Vail and ski instructors at Aspen and applied different levels of sunscreen to different halves of their face. A low spf was placed on one side and a higher spf on the other. It turns out the low SPF side wasn't protected enough to prevent a sunburn.

The low spf sunscreens that didn't do enough to protect from a burn included those sunscreens with an SPF 50 level or lower. According to these researchers, since we get a more intense sun exposure because of our high altitude, you might want to make sure you put on the higher level sunscreens---those with an spf of at least 70---to get the best protection.