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Lather Up: Wear Your Sunscreen

7.2.12
source: New England Journal of Medicine

If you’ve yet to see this photo, you’re in for a huge wake-up call.

The man pictured above is 68 year-old Bill McElligott. For 28 years he drove a truck delivering milk to stores and gas stations throughout Chicago from the wee hours in the morning until 3 pm.

If it hasn’t clicked yet why the one side of his face looks 20 years older than the other, take note of which side appears more aged. The left side. The side facing his truck window.

Doctors at Northwestern University concluded that the “asymptomatic thickening and wrinkling of the skin” was “consistent with the Farve-Racouchot syndrome of photodamaged skin” caused by Ultraviolet A (UVA) rays transmitted from the sun through the glass window.

If that doesn’t make you want to pick up a bottle of sunscreen and lather it on every 30 minutes, I don’t know what will. Granted, we’ve all been warned of the damaging affects of the sun. However, never before — at least that I’ve seen — has there ever been such irrefutable and visible proof of exactly how destructive the sun is to our bodies.

Typically, when we’re shown examples of sun damage, the wrinkles and aging depicted could also be due to a number of other factors: diet, exercise, smoking or environmental. But not in this case. Due to the damage being only on one side, all of those other factors can be ruled out and only one remains: the sun.

And I’m absolutely stunned — practically floored — by how much damage it can cause. It’s almost unbelievable.

The more I look at this photo, the more it makes me reconsider all of the other “damaging” items we’re constantly warned about. Alcohol. Processed food. Pesticides. Smoking. Toxic chemicals. The things that age and damage our bodies not only externally, but also internally.

Unfortunately, we’ll probably never see a photo as explicit as the one above depicting the damaging affects of each of those items, because they’re ingested internally. As a result, the damage they cause affects the whole body, which means there will always be another factor that could be to blame. However, it’s not that far of a leap to assume they can potentially wreak just as much havoc. Yet we consume at least two — if not more — of those items listed above on a daily basis.

So maybe the photo above is sending us a much bigger message than lather on more sunscreen more often. Maybe it’s telling us to take heed of all those warnings we hear and avoid all of those damaging things — to the best of our ability.

I know I will.

sources: 1,2,3

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