As a loyal customer of My Skin’s Friend, you know that we won’t offer a product unless we have done our homework and determined that we can make it more effective and more skin friendly than any of the competitors.  Our passion is helping people avoid chemicals by creating natural and organic products to help heal and protect our skin from environmental elements.

One of the products we’ve been improving during the winter months is a new and much improved organic sunscreen. As sunscreens go, our current one was one of the best. I used it personally on two recent trips to South America and was thrilled with the way it protected me against the hot tropical sun without the worry of that same solar heat and radiation simmering my skin in chemicals that were perhaps being marinated into my skin and blood stream.

As I watched mommies at the beach and pool slathering some of the popular brands of chemical soups onto their babies and then themselves, it made me sad because I knew that those mommies thought they were doing what was best for those sweet babies but I wondered if they were only trading one danger for another. 

Looking at the myrid of choices on the sunscreen section at the local Walgreens and Whole Foods, I saw that almost every one there had the same basic ingredients. These products typically include a combination of two to six of these active ingredients: oxybenzone, avobenzone, octisalate, octocrylene, homosalate and octinoxate. The mineral based sunscreens use zinc oxide and/or titanium dioxide. But what exactly are these chemicals and what should you know before covering your body with them.

The table below outlines human exposure and toxicity information for nine FDA-approved sunscreen chemicals.  We asked these questions:

• Will the chemical penetrate skin and reach living tissues?
• Will it disrupt the hormone system? 
• Can it affect the reproductive and thyroid systems and, in the case of fetal or childhood exposure, permanently alter reproductive development or behavior?
• Can it cause a skin allergy?
• What if it is inhaled?
• Other toxicity concerns?

 Here’s what we found.

Confused? Well, if you aren’t you’re probably a chemist or in another line of work that helps you parse this information into something you can use.

You'll notice that titanium dioxide is shown to be good too and from what we've been able to find,  it is indeed an excellent reflector of sunlight. So why didn't we put titanium dioxide in our formula? Because there are still concerns expressed by some agencies regarding the overall long term safety of titanium oxide. You can ready more about it in this article as it provides more insight into possible dangers using this property that is the primary ingredient in most paints to give it opacity. Is it safe? Maybe but we really don't know and as such, we elected to omit it from My Skin's Friend Sunscreen.

After months of research and experimenting with various recipes, we believe we've created one of the best, most skin friendly combination sunscreens and anti-oxidant combinations in the world!

Introducing My Skin’s Friend NEW AND IMPROVED Sunscreen with zinc oxide and sweet potato extract!

The first thing you’ll notice about this formula is that it contains NO titanium dioxide. Although it is known that titanium dioxide provides a broad spectrum sun dispersement, as mentioned above, there are some concerns that titanium may also be a carcinogen and we simply refuse to put anything in any of My Skin’s Friend products that are not completely free of such concerns.

The active ingredient is zinc oxide. The next thing you’ll notice is that unlike so many sunscreens with zinc oxide as its main UV blocker is how quickly it disappears onto the skin.   Unlike our original formula, this new creation is made from a smaller particle zinc oxide (but NOT nano sized) so it doesn’t leave your skin with that white film.

But this formula also includes an ingredient that is found in no other sunscreen of any price in the world. We’ve added our purple sweet potato extract to this formula like that found in our very popular sweet potato lotion. Here’s why.

As the skin is exposed to the sun’s UV rays, the zinc oxide reflects it back, thus protecting the skin just as an umbrella does. But just like the umbrella, there are always some UV rays that make it to the skin. That’s why all sunscreens, including ours, must be reapplied every hour or so depending on the activity you are engaged in, in order to cover any areas that might be letting UV rays through due to perspiration, swimming, etc.

When the UV rays do hit the skin, it produces free radicals. These free radicals are what causes the skin to burn and look damaged.  While the zinc oxide based sunscreen is shielding the skin, the sweet potato extract which is super rich in anti-oxidants is actually repairing the skin by helping neutralize free radicals being produced by the sun’s exposure.  My Skin’s Friend double action is the only one of its kind in the world as far as we know.

Whether you’re going to be spending time at the pool, beach, back yard, cycling, walking, well, you get the idea, anywhere in the outdoors, you need to make sure your skin is protected from UV rays and with My Skin’s Friend Sunscreen with sweet potato extract and zinc oxide, you can be confident you’re skin is getting the maximum protection it needs without any chemicals, alcohols, parabens or anything else that isn’t as natural as you are.

So get ready for summer and keep those babies protected naturally and organically with the help of My Skin’s Friend NEW & Improved Sunscreen.