Sunshine

The sun is a wonderful thing! It is essential for earth and life, and for human health and well-being. In the human body, it generates the production of vitamin D, supports bone health, lowers blood pressure, improves your sleep quality and promotes good mental health.

However, as with everything else, we should be mindful of its potential dangers especially to our skin. Almost everybody nowadays knows to use sunscreen to reduce the risk of premature skin aging and skin cancer, but is this enough?

As great as it is, sunscreen doesn’t exactly offer 100% protection from exposure to the sun. For example, a sunscreen of SPF 15 keeps out about 93% of bad UV rays, SPF 30 is worth about 97% protection and SPF 50+ garners about 98%. And this is with the assumption, that everyone is applying the sufficient amount of sunscreen daily.

But fret not, researchers have found that the addition of antioxidants can further prevent cancer and keep the skin firm and young looking. Typically sunscreens offers no protection against free radical damage, so antioxidants literally play a defensive role by diffusing the effects of the bad rays that make it through your sunscreen (by neutralising the free-radical damage that sun exposure causes). Not only that, antioxidants also help defend skin from other sources of free radicals, which can lead to skin problems no one wants.

Simply put, antioxidants supercharge your protection levels and also provide supplemental repair for your skin.

There are many ways to get an extra boost of antioxidants nowadays. For example, take a coenzyme Q10 tablet in the morning, or incorporating antioxidant-rich foods into your daily diet. Green tea and coffee fruit extract are potent antioxidants, as are fruits like, gac fruit, raspberries, pomelo and mangosteens. Not forgetting antioxidant supplements.

Many studies have shown that Vitamin C is one of the best antioxidant quenchers.

Together with sunscreen, a synergistic defense system is created to help your skin stay supple, healthy and vibrant

With antioxidants, the more the merrier!