Foods that Have the Power to Protect Your Skin from Sun Damage

Sun Protection for Your Skin From the Inside Out

Summer often brings sunburn. Besides just causing pain, blistering, and peeling skin, sunburn can set off lasting changes in the skin that lead to permanent discoloration, especially on darker skin, freckles, age spots, and various forms of skin cancer. Certain simple foods, however, have the power to protect your skin from the inside out if you just start eating them now.

Skin Tone and Sunburn

Sunburn is caused by exposure to ultraviolet rays. The severity of sunburn is inversely proportional to the amount of the skin pigment melanin in the skin. Fair skins contain relatively little melanin. Dark skins contain a lot of melanin.

Melanin is a giant molecule formed by linking together smaller molecules of the amino acid tyrosine. It is made in specialized skin cells known as melanocytes, where it is packaged into tiny spheres known as melanosomes, which are absorbed by the outer layers of the skin.

Melanin absorbs sunlight, and sunlight stimulates the production of melanin. When the skin is exposed to so much ultraviolet radiation that melanin cannot absorb it all, however, excess radiation goes into the DNA of outer layers of skin cells known as keratinocytes. When the DNA is these cells is disrupted, they become “sunburn cells,” programmed to die. Inflammatory processes clear these cells away for the renewal of healthy skin. The process of clearing the skin causes pain, redness, and inflammation. The destruction of skin cell DNA continues for up to 24 hours after exposure to sunlight and then diminishes.

A Strong Immune System Results in More Severe Sunburn

The immune systems of older persons are usually less active and cause a less severe inflammatory reaction to sunburn. The immune systems of children and teens are usually more active and cause a more severe inflammatory reaction to sunburn. If you have very little melanin in your skin, you burn more easily but sunburn is less likely to cause permanent discoloration of your skin by increasing melanin production (because there are fewer melanocytes to produce it). If you have a lot of melanin in your skin, you are less likely to burn but more likely to have lasting skin discoloration if you do.

Prevention Is Better than Cure

The most effective approach to healing sunburn is prevention. Stay out of the sun, wear protective clothing, or use sunblock with an SPF rating of 15 or more. The SPF number gives you a rough idea of how long you can stay out in the sun without burning. For instance, if you ordinarily burn in 10 minutes when you do not use sunscreen, you would be protected for 150 minutes by using a sunscreen with an SPF of 15. People who have fair skin, work or play outdoors most of the day, live at high altitudes, or perspire heavily should use a sunscreen with an SPF higher than 15. Swimming or perspiring heavily reduces the SPF effect of any sunscreen. But it also helps to change your diet.

Orange Vegetables Prevent Sunburn

If there is any one change in diet that can make a huge difference in how easily your skin burns in the sun, it's this:
Eat orange vegetables (such as carrots or sweet potatoes) daily. Include hearts of palm or palm oil in the diet when other nutritional concerns permit.

It also helps to avoid celeriac and Chinese herbal teas made with dong quai or psoralea. Celeriac and certain Chinese herbs, as well as St. John's wort, can increase sensitivity to the sun. Beta-carotene reduces it.

How Carrots and Other Orange Foods Fight Sunburn

Sunlight triggers sunburn by creating free radicals. Antioxidants absorb free radicals, and beta-carotene is an especially useful antioxidant because it is stored in the fat just below the layers of the skin that need it. Beta-carotene slightly raises the minimum level of UV exposure that causes tissue damage, so that people taking beta-carotene are more likely to tan than to burn.

Carrots are the best source of beta-carotene, although it is easier for your body to absorb the beta-carotene in carrots, sweet potatoes, and winter squash if you eat them with at least a small amount of oil or butter. Just 5 grams (1 teaspoon) or so is enough. Because they are made with oil, encapsulated beta-carotene supplements are better absorbed that beta-carotene from vegetables, the beta-carotene and the oil that the body needs to transport it into the hepatic portal vein and into the bloodstream being premixed. The beta-carotene in hearts of palm, however, is absorbed even better than the beta-carotene in supplements.

Eating very large quantities of carrots, in the range of 450–1,000 g (1–2 pounds) per day can cause a condition known as carotenodermia, in which the skin turns yellow and then orange. The condition is reversible when carrots are discontinued. Eating large quantities of carrots daily for several years can cause depletion of white blood cells (neutropenia) and menstrual disorders.

Carrots, sweet potatoes, winter squash, and hearts of palm are not the only plant foods that help protect against sunburn. Another very helpful plant food is the algae known as Duniella salina. It has been been tested in several clinical trials as a preventative for sunburn. You will find it in health products stores and online labeled either as Duniella or as "mixed carotenoids."

One study recruited 20 young women to take beta-carotene, or a placebo, for 10 weeks before a 13-day vacation at a resort on the shores of the Red Sea at the Israeli resort town of Eilat. The women who took beta-carotene had less skin redness regardless of the strength of sunscreen.

Scientists running two other studies found similar results. A study involving 20 people taking beta-carotene for 12 weeks and a study involving 22 people taking beta-carotene for 24 weeks found greater tolerance for summer sun. But a studies lasting just 23 days and 4 weeks did not find any benefit in taking carotenoids. If you want sun protection in the summer, you need to start taking carotenoids in the late spring. In the Northern Hemisphere, this means you need to start stoking up your carrots and orange vegetables or taking your beta-carotene in March. In the Southern Hemisphere, start getting ready summer in October.

Food as a preventive measure for sunburn works better the older you get. If you are over 70, a little extra beta-carotene in your diet may be exactly what you need to avoid nasty sunburns. For infants, toddlers, children, teens, and everyone else, however, it is still important to cover up or use sunblock.