Sun Rash
You’ve been looking forward to that summer jolly for months. The sun lounger is prepped, your catch up reading material is stashed in your poolside bag, the sun lotion is all rubbed in and it seems almost certain that you’ll return home bronzed. But when the sweating starts and your body is slowly covered by itchy mini-blisters, all of this goes out of the window, and that just won’t do! To save your skin and your summer, Beauty Terrorist breaks down sun rash.
Story Highlights
- The Facts
- Prevention Not Cure
- Chemicals
The Facts
Also known as solar dermatitis, sun rash is what happens when you mix sensitive skin with sweat, sun screen, over taxed pores and too much sun. It’s most common in kids and ladies but whoever’s afflicted, it’s an itchy and scratchy mess. Worse still it can leave horrid little white marks on your tanned skin, post holiday. Bad times.
Prevention Not Cure
Unfortunately sun rash isn’t the kind of thing you can exfoliate away in the shower after a day in the sunshine. These annoying blisters and spots take time to disappear so if you think you’re going to be afflicted, it’s best to brace yourselves and plan ahead to minimise the impact.
First of all anti histamines help prevent and reduce the associated inflammation so go and buy yourself some hay fever medication. Secondly skip the mid day sun. This is prime rash development time but fear not. The morning hours and late afternoon stints will still leave you lovely and brown. Also use a higher factor sun screen. The higher the number the lower the likelihood of sun rash.
Finally cleanse, tone and moisturise the at risk areas – namely your feet, breast bone, knee pits and any other particularly afflicted area that you might have. Keeping skin healthy and toned in the same way that you would your face, cuts recovery time and will bring back a healthy glow before you know it.
Chemicals
In sun rash situations it’s also worth changing your soap – if only for the duration of your trip. Soaps containing perfume or large amounts of moisturiser will only serve to irritate your already delicate skin so go for a PH balanced body wash instead. Dermalogica do a decent pump action number on this front.
Other chemicals or rather drugs can play a part in sun rash too. Certain diuretics, antibiotics and pain killers can contribute so if you’re taking any of the above, be sure to check with your doctor about possible reactions in the sunshine.
- Rob Savage
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