Sunscreen

Another word for sunscreen is sunblock, notice that when you break this word down down you are left with two words “sun” and “block” which is exactly what it does, it blocks the sun, and all of it’s essential goodness! Ideally, sunblock should be reserved for days when you are going to be in high noon sun for prolonged periods of time, because blocking the sun, also blocks vitamin D production, which is essential for fighting cancer. So we are going to see a lot of skin cancer in this next generation who has been taught from birth to LIVE in sunblock. Makeup is even being made with sunblock in it now! Vitamin D deficiency is going to skyrocket with a practice of sun avoidance and chronic sunblock usage.

To produce a full day’s worth of vitamin D, you only need about 10-30 minutes of full mid-day sun exposure (all limbs and face exposed) so you could easily just add your sunblock (non-toxic, of course 😛) after you get your quota for the day. We try to plan our days around the sun and prefer to go out for longer periods of time before 11am and after 3pm. If we are going to be out in the middle of the day, we wait a few minutes before applying sunblock.

The Environmental Working Group’s Guide to Sunscreen

You’ll find the most comprehensive list of safe sunscreens here, but what I have noticed by going through just about every item on the list, is that even with all these great options, low salicylate ingredients are hard to come by so I will list a few other options below that aren’t included in this guide.

Cleure Sunscreen

If you or a loved one needs to avoid high salicylate ingredients that are commonly found in most sunscreens, like coconut oil and aloe vera, this is the brand for you! Our younger son is very sensitive to salicylate so I’ve had to experiment with a lot of natural products for him.

We use their hand soap (one in every bathroom for my younger son), sunblock and hair gel.

Cleure offers skin care, oral care, hair care and make-up so look around to see if you like anything else. I’m not a fan of their deodorant which contains potassium aluminum sulfate. There are other deodorant options available in the low salicylate for the body link.

Pure Haven Sunscreen

This is NOT low salicylate, but they have clean ingredients if you don’t need to be low salicylate.

Solar RX by Keys

While the ingredients are not SUPER low salicylate, my really sensitive kiddo is fine using this product. The first ingredient is shea butter, so perhaps the other ingredients are so low that even with repeated use at the beach, we don’t see symptoms. I understand that every person will be different, so please use with caution and I would recommend a conscientious trial before applying to the entire body.

If you require something much lower in salicylate, Cleure (listed above) might be your best option. We really like that sunblock too, in fact, it’s a bit thinner in consistency than this one, but I like this one for the purity of the ingredients. We have both and I try to switch it up a bit so we aren’t using the same thing over and over.

I’d also like to throw this out there. Blocking our skin from the UV rays of the sun is actually counterproductive to the concept of skin cancer, because we need elevated levels of vitamin D to prevent cancer. We only use sunblock when we plan to be in the sun for longer periods of time around high noon. We leave ourselves unprotected during earlier and later time periods and even when we go out during high noon, we wait to apply sunblock for about 15 minutes so we can capture the sun’s rays long enough to produce some natural vitamin D. Studies are mounting against sunblock (especially toxic ingredients) as it relates to cancer. But please, do your own research on this and be diligent about keeping track of time if you are going to be in the sun for prolonged periods. Our body only needs about 10-15 minutes of direct sun to produce enough vitamin D for the day. Full skin exposure is ideal too.

If you would prefer to buy with Amazon for the free Prime shipping, here is the link.