There are news stories all the time that say skin cancer rates are up. If you live in Australia, you don’t dare go outside in the mid day without a hat on your head and sun screen on your skin. There is a hole in the ozone layer over that continent, and the sun is very brutal. If you live in the US, you may or may not experience snow, but you probably experience a time of year when the temps are not as high as usual. Though it is cooler, and there might be snow on the ground, you still have to worry about the winter sun.
There is no time during the year when you don’t have to worry about getting skin damage. The winter sun might not be as intense as the summer sun, but it can still do damage. You have to remember this when you go outside in the winter sun for more than ten or fifteen minutes. If you don’t want to bother with sun screen in the winter, and most people do not, you can always wear moisturizer that has SPF protection. This might be something women do, but men can do it as well. No one has to know.
The winter sun can be very hard on the eyes as well. Many don’t think to wear sunglasses when they go out in the winter, but it is actually a very good idea. When there is snow on the ground, the winter sun will glare up and into the eyes even more harshly than it does in the summer time. This can make driving hard in some cases, and can even cause momentary blindness when you are walking down the sidewalk.
Don’t mistake the level of heat with the intensity of the sun during the winter months. Even those in the lower part of the US think they can get away without sunscreen in the winter months. It might only be fifty degrees, but the rays of the winter sun are just as harmful. Remember to keep your children protected in all seasons so they don’t have to worry about skin cancer as much as our generation does. My mother’s generation was probably one of the first to do a lot of damage to their skin, and by the time they realized what they had done it was too late to warn their children about the dangers.
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