Advertisement
5 Things You Need To Know About Your Natural Sunscreen
1. Mineral blockers are free from chemical sunscreens.
Most traditional sunscreens use a cocktail of chemicals that absorb into the skin and scatter the sun’s rays to prevent burning. Mineral sunscreens use natural titanium and zinc that act like a mirror to simply reflect rays away.
2. Unlike chemical SPF, mineral sunscreens offer immediate and long-lasting protection.
Have you ever wondered why you’re advised to wait 15 to 30 minutes after applying sunscreen before venturing into the sun? It's because chemical sunscreens have to be fully absorbed into skin before they're actually effective. Natural mineral sunscreens, however, work immediately to block rays, plus they don’t break down over time.
3. Minerals offer broad-spectrum protection, naturally.
Chemical sunscreens guard against burning rays (UVB), but not all of them fight early skin aging (caused by UVA rays). It's important to read your sunscreen label to check if it’s broad spectrum (a combo of UVA and UVB protection). Zinc oxide is one of the most popular physical sunscreens because it provides natural, broad-spectrum protection.
4. Have sensitive skin? Mineral sunscreen is less irritating.
Long-term health risks aside, sunscreen chemicals can potentially trigger allergies and other skin reactions. Since natural minerals reflect UV rays and aren’t absorbed into the skin, they are much less likely to cause irritation. This makes them great for those with sensitive skin or anyone who wants to avoid synthetic chemicals.
5. Using mineral sunscreen is gentler on Mother Nature’s skin.
Usually, if something isn’t good for you, it’s also not good for the planet. Chemical sunscreens are no exception. Studies have shown that common chemical sunscreens like oxybenzone can be damaging to coral reefs, which serve as homes for 25 percent of all ocean life. These chemicals can awaken latent viruses in algae, a reef's source of nourishment. Once the algae dies, so do the reefs. For this reason, reefs are disappearing twice as fast as rain forests. We can help prevent this from happening simply by switching to natural mineral sunscreen. When formulas are made with minerals that come from the earth, those minerals can safely return there once your day in the sun is done.
Related Reads:
- These Are The 4 Things To Avoid In Your Sunscreen, According to EWG
- The 15 Best Natural Sunscreens To Use This Summer
Nova Covington is the Founder and CEO of Goddess Garden, the fastest-growing suncare brand for the past five years. She is also a mom who was inspired to create better alternatives after her baby daughter’s skin reacted to the synthetic chemicals in body care products.
Nova attended college at Oregon State University and began her career at Hewlett-Packard in leadership development. She later received her Master’s Degree from the University of Denver in Business and International Communications.
Using her education and business acumen, along with her inspiration to help her daughter, Nova and her husband, Paul, created Goddess Garden. From day one, their mission was to provide the type of products they wished were available for their daughter—truly natural products that were safe for people and the planet.
Nova has recently taken her passion for protecting the planet one step further by creating the Goddess Garden Foundation. Because chemical sunscreens are contributing to the destruction of coral reefs, the focus of the Foundation is to help fund projects to protect the reefs and clean up the oceans, and educate people on making safe choices.
Today, Goddess Garden helps makes these safe choices easy to find by producing a complete line of certified organic skincare products that are free from synthetic chemicals and hormone disruptors, and are safe for children, adults and the Earth. Their reef-safe sunscreen products are carried in nearly 10,000 stores in the U.S. and Canada, including Whole Foods, Target, CVS, Wegmans, REI, Sprouts Farmers Market, Walgreens and most natural retailers.