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[music] Hello, I’m Dr. Neal Schultz
[pause]
and welcome to DermTV.
In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I’d like to discuss a question submitted by
a DermTV Live viewer. The viewer asked, do I have any tips for people with
freckled, light-colored skin? Obviously, people of Irish ancestry often
have this colored skin which is lighter and frequently freckled. The real
problem with this color skin is it has a genetically determined decreased
protection from the sun and the reason it does is because there’s just less
natural pigment to protect from the sun. So that genetically increases
their susceptibility to sun damage, and that increased susceptibility to
sun damage is further demonstrated by the fact that they have lots of
freckles and those freckles frequently darken in response to the sun and
they get more and more freckles. I have three tips for people with this
type of skin. Number one concerns sun protection, it’s not just sunscreen
but sun protection because I’m including with that, in addition to
sunscreen, oral supplementation to help prevent sun damage. In addition,
nightly antioxidants and, third and equally important is the tip of twice a
year instead of once a year annual skin cancer screening exams which, for
them, are semi-annual to ensure the early detection and early treatment of
any precancerous lesions, but let’s go back to sun protection. There are
pills called Heliocare which contain an herbal extract from the fern plant,
and that’s called polypodium leucotomos, and it’s a pretty fancy word, but
it’s a natural antioxidant which is well-absorbed and has been demonstrated
to decrease sun damage, particularly in people with light-colored skin.
Obviously, you also want to have people with light-colored skin use
sunscreen every day with an SPF of 30 with UVA protection and make sure
they use it on all areas of their skin that are exposed to the sun and, of
course, re-apply it frequently. The nightly antioxidants again are more
important on light-colored skin because those antioxidants can better help
protect that genetically weaker, more susceptible skin against skin cancers
and premature aging of the skin. Lastly, the frequent semi-annual skin
cancer screening exams are very, very important, because there is nothing
better at treating skin cancer than preventing it and, if precancerous
moles or early skin cancers are picked up, the earlier they’re picked up,
the easier they are to cure 100%. So, for everybody out there with light-
colored skin or any colored skin, Happy St. Patrick’s Day.