Sunscreen that comes as a pill! How futuristic! How Gen Z! But does it work?
Sunscreen is a sonofabitch. You know it. I know it. Big pharma knows it.
Who likes it? Nobody wants to slick ’emselves in a stew of unpronounceable chemicals every two hours. But you want to get eaten up by a melanoma? Spend your last days affixed to a chemo tube? Yeah, me neither.
Now, according to the NY Times, edible sunscreen is on the menu. Instead of tubes of gunk rolling round the back of your car and swipes of zinc on your seats a new future beckons: grab a bottle of pills and shake out a little sun protection.
Every morning before Scott Kyle, a 53-year-old competitive sailor from San Clemente, Calif., hits the water, he chugs an orange-flavored beverage named UVO, a drinkable sunscreen intended to fight off sunburn from the inside out.
The vitamin-rich cocktail, available on the internet and at dozens of medical spas, tanning salons and pharmacies across the country, contains 30 immune-boosting antioxidants and other nutrients that, the makers say, help protect and repair the skin from sun damage.
“Normally I would be sunburned for a couple of days, and now I’m not,” Mr. Kyle said. “I’ve given it to other sailors, and they notice a difference. Now they come up to me and say, ‘Have you had your UVO today?’”
Mr. Kyle is not alone. A growing number of outdoors enthusiasts are turning to new sunscreen products that are said to protect the skin from harmful rays without the need to apply — and reapply — messy lotions and gels. But there is scant scientific evidence that the products actually work, or whether they have potentially harmful side effects.
In New York’s Hamptons, beachgoers pass around bottles of orange pills called Heliocare and pop the supplements as if they are a party drug. The herbal remedy is made from a fern called Polypodium leucotomos that is native to Central and South America, and its makers say that it helps the skin be more resilient to the sun and maintain a youthful look.
Do the tabs work?
Dr. David J. Leffell, the chief of dermatologic surgery and cutaneous oncology at the Yale School of Medicine, said that he understood the appeal of these alternative sunscreen products. “If you tell someone, ‘You can take this pill before you go out or you can drink this nice, refreshing, berry-flavored drink,’ they are hearing ‘magic bullet,’” he said. “They think, ‘I’ll drink this, and then I can do whatever I want because I’ll be protected.’”
But “there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that UVO functions as a sun protector,” or that any of these oral sunscreen products do what they say they do, Dr. Leffell said. “There is a sucker born every minute.”
A sucker born every minute?
Maybe buy as an accompaniment to your Modem anti-shark leash
or
Keep the bottle in your glovebox next to your Power Balance bracelet.
I’ll stick with the zinc, mostly because I look like a black metal musician on his way to burn down a church when I pull up at the beach dressed in all black and listening to Danzig.
My Irish ass can’t take a risk like that. However I’ve been able to maintain my boyish good looks using Zinka my whole life. I’m still trying to find a super effective basecoat screen….any fair skinned surfers have any favorite screens?
Headhunter makes a good one along with sun bum. My wife puts this honest company stuff on our kids, seems to last in the water. I like it because honest company was started or invested in by Jessica alba. She hot
Thank you Capitan!
Jessica Alba is a goddess. Watch “Idle Hands” and see if you can make it through w out gettin a boner!
Shiseido makes some stuff that is kind of expensive, but in my experience works better than Headhunters, Vertra, Zinka or whatever other surf brand stuff I’ve tried over the years.
True, bullfrog is also really good. Get the alcohol based stuff, it dries quickly and leaves no slippery residue. It’s cheap and sourced from Walmart next to the no ad.
While we’re on the subject of medical breakthroughs…. try
NEW Wanking Sock™! So many people die of illness and injury and old age every
day. So sad. And unnecessary! After feeding the chooks, simply boil up Wanking
Sock™and drink your delicious broth. Not only will you become immortal and
physically attractive, you will also save your hypothetical unborn children
from the pains of birth and death!
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Well at least you know it’s guaranteed to work..
That illustration just makes me think of that happy glow you used to get from taking pills in the 90s. (ecstasy for all the non poms)
The problem with these things is that they are based on antioxidants that might have an effect if applied directly, or in a test tube, but when you eat/ drink them they tend to be broken down in the liver. Nothing says that they will accumulate in the skin or even get there in the first place.