How Does Sun Exposure Affect the Skin’s Natural Barriers?

While it may be pleasant to feel the sun’s warmth on your skin, this seemingly simple act can cause a lot of damage. Unfortunately, experts estimate that 80 percent of a person’s lifetime sun exposure builds up before they turn 18. Despite the importance of sun protection to one’s overall health, most people only learn about the detrimental effects of sun exposure when they’re already apparent on the skin. However, sun exposure doesn’t just affect appearance. It can also lead to serious diseases, like skin cancer. To illustrate, here’s what you need to know about the effects of sun exposure:

What Happens to the Skin Once It’s Exposed to the Sun?

The skin is your body’s largest organ. And it plays a crucial role of protecting your internal organs from the external environment. Since the skin is made up of many layers, the skin barrier or the stratum corneum serves as your body’s first line of defense. This outermost barrier consists of tough skin cells so that harmful toxins and pathogens cannot enter your body and cause illnesses.

Unfortunately, the skin barrier can degenerate because of the sun’s harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation. A study revealed that all four categories of UV radiation can cause damage, even on skin that’s only exposed to low levels of sunlight. This occurs because UV rays are strong enough to affect the proteins that help your skin cells adhere to each other. So once your skin barrier is exposed to these rays, the cells in your skin barrier or stratum corneum become weaker and lose their ability to bond with other cells. Due to this mechanism, you may observe that sunburnt skin will lead to skin peeling. This is the first warning sign that your skin’s structural integrity has been damaged.

Sunburn and skin peeling are already uncomfortable to experience. However, prolonged sun exposure can further damage your skin barrier and cause more detrimental effects. To illustrate, a damaged skin barrier will develop dryness, itchiness, sensitivity, and rough patches. These changes can lead to photoaging, which manifests as the early development of wrinkles, fine lines, and age spots. Unfortunately, a damaged skin barrier can also lead to serious diseases, like actinic keratosis. This disease causes rough and scaly lesions to develop over the skin, as a result of years of unprotected sun exposure. On top of that, you can also develop skin cancer because of excessive sun exposure.

How Can You Protect Your Skin?

You can prevent the damaging appearance of sun exposure by following a proper skincare routine. A good regimen will improve the appearance of your such as dry and red skin. To illustrate, a patented skincare system infused with Qi Probiotic extracts can provide your skin with bio-identical probiotics. These probiotics promote the friendly bacteria on your skin that may in turn protect it from external challenges. As such, this advanced skincare routine can strengthen, protect, smoothen, brighten, and balance your skin’s natural barrier.

That said, sun damage is truly skin deep, which is why you must consult with a healthcare professional before it’s too late. Once you experience peeling, dryness, sensitivity, or itchiness, consult a professional with general healthcare credentials regarding your damaged skin barrier. They can provide you with first-aid remedies for sun damage and skincare recommendations for optimal protection. Moreover, their background in physiology and informatics ensures that they can pinpoint any other potential issues you might have to deal with following the skin damage.

Sun exposure can weaken your skin barrier, leading to sunburn, skin peeling, sensitivity, photoaging. To protect your skin’s natural barrier, probiotic skincare products from BioEsse is a skincare system that contains advanced technology that will help balance and protect your skin for its optimal health and function.

Article specially written for bioesseprobiotics.com

Written by: JBabington