A ‘hot topic’ right now is sunscreen,  what’s good and what’s not and the other day I was at an appointment telling someone about how much trouble I had with this new sunscreen I had trialed,  when this lady sitting nearby overheard and piped up saying I had the same thing happen to me with exactly the same sunblock.

New to the market last year was the Neutrogena Helioplex range which they have trademarked, it is a major scientific breakthrough in sunscreen technology and given the recent stats on skin cancer in this country, we can all do with using the latest and greatest.   They claim that it ensures long-lasting protection against both UVA and UVB rays after it was discovered that other sunscreens can break down when exposed to light and lets face it anything new and innovative is normally the way to go.

So I used it through my holidays and as an avid sunscreen user I applied it everyday and always twice a day.  It felt very thick when I applied it to my face, within minutes it tingled and felt uncomfortable. It was ok on the rest of my body but not on my face, over the course of a couple of weeks I realised that it was really aggravating my skin, it had become really red and sore.  I kept thinking I was just taking time to get use to it but, no.  My skin also became really blocked and I had lots of breakouts due to the sunscreen as well.  I tried both of the products I had which was the Ultra Sheer 55 and the 70.  After weeks of trying I finally stopped using them on my face and the problem went away, eventually.

An interesting note is: did you know that sunscreens can be split into two types chemical and physical, chemical barriers absorb UV’s converting them into energy and safely filtering them through the body’s cooling system.  Physical sunscreens bounce the UV’s back.

I love this though, the Cancer Society recommend applying sunblock in two layers in case you miss a bit on the first go and applying at least 30ml (six teaspoons) a time which makes a total of 60ml (12 teaspoons) or the size of a small orange.  As they say on the Tui billboards   Yeah right!  You would be hard pushed to find anyone who applies that much sunscreen, but I will say the main thing to remember is to reapply again half way through the day as it doesn’t last.  Also, don’t be fooled by the ‘Daylong’ sunscreens on the market, they don’t work either.

So my slant on it is this, the Neutrogena sunscreen may claim to block the sun out but, in the process, it blocked the pores on my face and caused it to become very red and sore.  The fact that it tingles within 5 minutes of applying it, is never a good thing.   So by all means buy it for the rest of your body, (although this is quite and expensive way to buy your sunblock) but don’t put it anywhere near your face.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 7:29 pm and is filed under Beauty, Women. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.