It’s not quite Summer yet, but the days are getting longer, and the sun, a bit brighter, and anyone who reads my What Works Beauty, Cosmetics & Fashion Review Columns (online for a decade this year) knows that I believe protecting your skin against the sun’s damaging rays every single days is an absolute must. Doing so at an early age can help prevent the signs of premature aging. A skin cancer the size of a dime can kill you, so protecting your skin with sunblocks can also potentially save your life as well. But what you can’t see is something many people feel they can ignore. Such is the problem with the sun’s UVA/UVB rays. Unless you get a sunburn (and by then the damage is done) you don’t really know they’re out there, sabotaging your skin. Furthermore, most people simply don’t want to put out the extra effort to add a sunblock to their skincare routine, or they don’t like the smell, the texture or myriad other things.
What is this special product? It’s not only interesting, it’s really inexpensive. The product is the Elements Protective Cleanser $6.99 4 fl. oz by St. Ives. A cheerful yellow bottle with frosted pump top holds a cleanser that multi-tasks to also provide SPF protection (SPF 10) as you wash. Key ingredients are avobenzone (oil-soluable ingredient used in sunscreens to absorb the full spectrum of UVA rays); octinoxate (compound that absorbs UVB rays); octocrylene (aborbs ultraviolet ligh); and Vitamin E (anti-oxidant). The slightly fruity scented cleanser is more like a very creamy lotion that you are supposed to massage it into your face for 1-2 minutes (it isn’t clear if you get more effective SPF protection if you work in into your skin longer but it would make sense) and then wash it off. The sunscreens in this product are encapsulated into a positively-charged silica shell so it sticks to your skin, which is negatively charged, and it won’t rinse off. The product did clean leftover makeup and dirt off our skin, of course. But they key is what it leaves ON your skin. When I tried this one, after drying my face there was a feeling of a light coating on my skin. This, I assume, is the sun protection…and I didn’t have to do a single extra thing to get it!’
