Sunscreen is the best anti-aging weapon. Numerous studies, the American Academy of Dermatology, the Skin Cancer Foundation and major fashion magazines (like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar) all support this point. Adding another one to the books is a new study that found women who use sunscreen are more likely to be exceptional skin agers when compared to women who almost never do.
Sunscreen Prevents Skin Aging
Olay conducted the study in partnership with 23andMe. Olay is one of the largest skin care companies in the world so that’s just a note to be aware of and, of course, sunscreens are one of the hundreds of skin care products they make. But the study is so reputable that it will be presented at the American Academy of Dermatology’s annual meeting in March 2017. 23andMe is a personal genetics company.
The study featured over 155,000 participants (that’s a lot of women!) and found the following results:
“Women who almost always used sunscreen were 78% more likely to be an exceptional skin ager, compared to women who almost never do.”
At the same time the study discovered that greater exposure to the sun also caused women’s skin to age faster:
“Women who frequently sunbathed were 35% less likely to be an exceptional skin ager.”
Yes, this study once again proves sunscreen is a fantastic anti-aging product!
You Can Take Control of Your Skin’s Health
This study was inspired by Olay’s Multi-Decade and Ethnicities Study (MDE) conducted last year. The MDE found biological commonalities among a group of women called “exceptional skin agers”. Olay scientists found that this group of women looked more than 10 years younger than their actual age and shared a unique gene expression fingerprint.
This lead Olay to question why some women look younger – is it due genetics or lifestyle choice or environment? They set out to discover the answer.
Back to the current study. The findings show that your lifestyle choices play a significant role in your skin’s age and health. Including using sunscreen and avoiding sunbathing their research also found additional positive predictors of skin health: activity and energy levels, living in an urban area, regular exercise, eight or more hours of sleep a night, multi-vitamin usage and high self-rated health.
Negative predictors included: smoking and a body mass index of over 25.
What I take away from all this is that you can take control of your skin and how it ages. I think this quote from Dr. Frauke Neuser, Principal Scientist, Olay Skin Care says a lot:
“These findings are incredibly exciting because they show that women can actively take beauty into their own hands. In this study, having skin that looks exceptionally young – ageless – was not down to luck; genetics plays some role, but factors within women's control have larger effects.”
More Sunscreen Anti-Aging Proof
If you want to see even more evidence and studies on the anti-aging benefits of sunscreen check out any of these posts on our blog:
