Sunburn may just seem like red skin with a sting, but it is actually much more detrimental. Most don’t realize sunburn means the skin has been damaged severly since sunburns are actually considered first (or in the case of blistering/peeling, second) degree burns.
How Does the Sun Actually Harm the Body?
UV Rays:
To understand how the sun harms the skin short and long term, the effects of UV rays must be known. UV rays come from the sun’s light in two types, UVA and UVB. Each type has a different effect on skin. UVA rays causes the skin to age and UVB causes sunburn, but both contribute to the formation of cancer cells.
How UV Rays harm the Body:
Since UV rays are a type of radiation, they damage skin after prolonged exposure by destroying the DNA in cells. The damage done by rays has effects which can be seen in an hour and some which are seen years later. Once the body notices UV rays are damaging the skin, melanin starts to absord UV rays in order to protect from further damage. But, once too many UV rays are absorbed, your skin reacts poorly by turning red, painful, and sometimes starts peeling. This what we know to be a sunburn.
Long term Effects:
In the long run this skin damage can lead to cancer. To understand why, we have to remember UV rays damage cells and DNA. When rays reach the DNA in a skin cell, bonds between nucleotides (the building blocks of DNA) are broken. This causes the instructions of the DNA to be ruined, which results in mutations. When the DNA message is wrecked, the damaged cell may not know to kill itself and stop dividing. When damaged cells continue to divide a cancerous tumor is formed in the skin. Skin cancer takes the form of dark spots/moles on the skin’s surface. Skin cancer itself isn’t very harmful but, cancerous cells from a tumor in the skin can spread to critical organs leading to death.
This is what skin cancer looks like:
My thoughts:
Although many people know the sun is harmful to us, I still feel that sun safety isn’t talked about enough. I still see people on sunny days purposely exposing themselves to UV rays to tan, and some even welcome a bit of burn. This shows that many people still do not know the extent of damage that UV rays can do. A common myth is that sun exposure without sunscreen is good because your body needs vitamin D. This isn’t true because it has been proved that walking a couple minutes in moderate sunlight gives you more than enough Vitamin D, and that’s not even including the subtantial amount of vitamin D that most people get from food. If people were more informed of what the sun can do to us, many deaths or health issues could be prevented. The effects of the sun should be taught in schools from a young age, just like healthy eating is.
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