Wishing for darker skin is the reason anybody is going to be suntanning in the first place, but for generations now it’s been well known that leaving your skin exposed to direct sunlight with high UVA / UVB concentrations can do permanent damage to the skin. There’s many people who spend countless hours lying in the sun in their youth who regret doing it when they move into middle age and beyond. One of the types of hyperpigmentation that is quite common for people who are avid sunbathers is sunspots. So does sunscreen help with hyperpigmentation? 

These sunspots are also called solar lentigines, and naturally they are going to be more pronounced and notable for people who have lighter skin. Of course those are the same people who are more likely to be suntanning as it is, so in some ways the desire to have a ‘golden glow’ to their skin during summertime for people with naturally fair skin can be something of a trade-off. They get the tan, but they may also be increasing their chances of hyperpigmentation and sun spots. They occur because of UVA / UVB ray exposure so it makes sense that using sunscreen will protect against solar lentigines.  

So that can be your basic takeaway here in relation to does sunscreen help with hyperpigmentation. It can protect against it, but only in the instance of sunspots. There are other types of skin hyperpigmentation too, and some of them will have nothing to do with sun exposure or even what people choose to do with their time to change their appearance. If this is a concern for you one of the first things you should understand is that more expensive sunscreens tend to provider better protection against skin damage. You get what you pay for with them. 

Smarter Skincare

Continuing this look at does sunscreen help with hyperpigmentation the more ominous risk for people who spend too much time in the sun without sunscreen is developing skin cancer. Any dermatologist will tell you that if a person has developed sunspots because of sun exposure then that is quite likely enough exposure to also be raising their risk of having a melanoma in their skin. People often get sunspots on their face and neck, but not their ears. There’s something notable in that connected to does sunscreen help hyperpigmentation, and we’ll explain.  

It's good to know how to get rid of a sunburn, but you should be extra focused on preventing the tops of your earlobes from getting sunburnt. This is an area of the skin where melanomas are found for people very often, and it’s often a spot people skip when applying sunscreen. You should be putting it on every body area that’s going to be in the sun, and more for the overall health of your skin. But avoiding hyperpigmentation can be part of your reasoning too and the answer is definitely yes for does sunscreen help with hyperpigmentation.