The Liz Moody Podcast - Science‑Backed or Bust: Is Sunscreen Actually Bad For You?

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

Is sunscreen actually bad for you? I’m diving into the science behind one of the most debated skincare topics. We’ll explore if sunscreen is negatively affecting your Vitamin D levels, the potential risks of certain ingredients (like oxybenzone), the differences between chemical and mineral sunscreens, and how to choose products that actually protect your skin against cancer without compromising your overall health.  You’ll also learn about the surprising ways your diet and lifestyle impact your skin’s natural defenses, plus hear actionable tips to build a routine that supports your skin barrier and microbiome. Whether you’re a sunscreen skeptic or a devoted daily user, this episode will leave you feeling informed, empowered, and ready to make the best choices for your skin health. Subscribe to the substack to read the 30+ studies Liz referenced in this episode and see all of Liz’s favorite sunscreen products by going to https://lizmoody.substack.com/welcome. Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order Liz’s book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  Connect with Liz on Instagram @lizmoody or online at www.lizmoody.com.  To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. Use our discount codes from our  highly vetted, tested brand partners by visiting https://www.lizmoody.com/codes.  This episode is brought to you completely free thanks to the following podcast sponsor: Wildgrain: go to Wildgrain.com/LIZMOODY for $30 off the first box – PLUS a free item in every box. The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. Formerly the Healthier Together Podcast.  This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. The Liz Moody Podcast Episode 350. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Liz Moody podcast. Today, we are kicking off a brand new series where I'm going to dive into the latest wellness trends, and I'm going to let you know what's fact, what's fiction, what the real science says. I'm basically scouring the internet for what people are talking about all of the time, probably to the detriment of my own brain. But if you have specific topic requests for these episodes, leave a comment on Spotify or on Instagram or review on Apple, and I will do my absolute best to include topics that you want covered in future episodes. And of course, make sure that you are following the podcast and Apple

podcast on Spotify or on YouTube so you actually see those episodes come up in your feed because a lot of you have DM'd me lately and said that you got removed from following. So even if you think you are following, maybe check that again to make sure that that glitch also didn't happen to you. Also, for those of you who are not familiar with my background, I am a journalist. I have been for over two decades, which is actually really crazy to say. And I've had more of a focus on science communication in the last 10 years or so. I am not a doctor. I want to be immensely clear on that. My expertise is an understanding and synthesizing information from different sources to give you a whole picture. So for instance, today we're talking about sunscreen. And I've wanted to do

an episode about this for years, but dermatologists have one specific perspective. Cosmetic Scientists have another, MDs specializing in hormone health have a whole other perspective. While our Wednesday episodes have always featured interviews with top experts in all different fields, and they will continue to do that because I absolutely love them. I feel so grateful that I get to talk to these incredible people and share their wisdom with you. These episodes are more about covering trending topics that benefit from synthesizing information from a number of different areas. We also have a research assistant on the team. Shout out to Kaylin. She has a PhD in health psychology.

She is a professor of health and exercise science. She helps me dive into the studies and make sure that they are all being interpreted accurately. Today, we're going to be tackling a wellness trend that I have seen all over the internet and social media. The idea that sunscreen is dangerous. I thought that this was more niche and on the alternative sides of the internet, but I keep being asked about it.

And even my dad told me that he is now anti-senscreen. So I was like, okay, I got to dive into what the real. research actually says here, mostly so that I have an episode to send to him. There are a few angles that I've seen people take online when they are promoting foregoing sunscreen. A number of people take issues with the ingredients in sunscreen while other people are like, we don't need it. Our ancestors never use sunscreen and they were fine. The sun is how we get the vitamin D that protects us from cancer. So instead of preventing cancer, sunscreen is actually giving us cancer. So we're going to get into all of that. But let's start with diving into

to ingredients first, and let's start with vitamin A. You can find some version of vitamin A in a lot of sunscreens. It might say retinal or retinal pomatate on the label, and it's one of the ingredients that I've seen people have a lot of concerns about. There are some animal studies, specifically on hairless mice, that have shown that applying lotions with vitamin A actually seem to speed up the formation of skin tumors when exposed to UV light. Essentially, it appeared to be photocarsenogenic in these mice, which definitely sounds scary. But here's the crucial caveat. These results have not been replicated or demonstrated at all in humans.

Human trials can take a really long time to develop and there are ethics issues around putting people in positions where they might have increased risks of cancer. This is one of the very frustrating things about interpreting research. Sometimes we just do not know yet. These studies are mixed and in humans we cannot definitively say, oh, this increases cancer risk. For me, and this is just a Liz Moody. opinion here, I personally avoid vitamin A in my sunscreen's just to be extra safe. I want to be immensely clear that the science does not necessarily support this yet, but it is enough research

that I am like better safe than sorry and there are plenty of sunscreen brands out there that do not have vitamin A in them. So I don't find this particularly hard to make this swap in my life. This is a general approach to health stuff that I take if it doesn't impact my life negatively at all and it might have positive benefits, I'm usually going to do it. And everybody has a different approach to how they weigh these different factors when it comes to their health, but that is mine. I will say that I use a derivative of vitamin A, a retinoid as part of my skincare routine, and it is hands down the single thing that has made the biggest impact on how my skin looks.

It helps with the visible sun damage. It helps just make everything look so smooth and glowy. I get the generic 0.025% tritenoin cream. It is prescribed to me by my dermatologist. Shout out to Dr. Sam Ellis, who was also the person who told me that the 0.025% 1 has been shown in studies to have as powerful of effects as the 0.05% 1, but with way less irritation. But she also told me, and hopefully your dermatologist told you that if you use any type of retinoid, you really, really need to use sunscreen, like even more than the average person. Retinoids work by accelerating cell turnover, bringing fresh baby.

skin cells to the surface. These new cells are more delicate and therefore more sensitive to the sun's UV rays. So while the retinoid itself isn't necessarily reacting with the sun to cause damage, it is creating a state in your skin that makes it more vulnerable to sunburn and to UV damage. Beyond that, many retinoids can break down or become less effective when exposed to sunlight. This is why most dermatologists are going to recommend applying your retinoids at night. So if you are using a retinoid, you just need to be extra. indigent about your sun protection to protect your skin and to make sure that your retinoid is doing its job effectively. So that's the vitamin A conversation. To me, I'm like vitamin A and its

derivatives, i.e. retinoids are a nighttime thing and I'm going to minimize the sun exposure around them as much as possible. Okay, let's dive into another ingredient that has raised a lot of concern online. A few years ago, a huge news story broke that an independent lab found alarmingly high levels of benzene, which is a known human carcinogen in one-third of popular sunscreen brands. This was from an unintentional contamination during the manufacturing process, but there were recalls from a ton of the brands that you see most regularly in stores like Banana Bo and Nutrugina and Avino and Copperton. And benzene is no joke. This is not like a maybe it's bad, the jury's still out type of thing. Benzine has been linked to various types of

leukemia, to lymphoma, to lung cancer. So it is absolutely fair to say that, at least until a couple of years ago, and for those specific contaminated batches, yes, there was a very real, albeit unintended risk that sunscreen could have contributed to cancer. This was a massive, massive wake-up call for the industry. Beyond benzene, though, there's been ongoing discussion about chemical sunscreen filters like oxybenzone and avabenzone being absorbed into our bloodstreams. This is one of the things that there is a ton of screaming debate about online. On one side, people are like, your skin is your largest organ. Everything that you put on your skin is getting into your body.

And on the other side, people are like your skin is a barrier designed to keep foreign substances out so you can be far more chill about the ingredients that you use. And as usual, the actual answer lies somewhere in the middle, a world that social media and clickbait news absolutely hates. Your skin is a really effective barrier and everything that you're putting on it is not just going into your bloodstream. That is what it is there for and it does a really good job. However, while our skin keeps most things out, various chemicals in our cosmetics and body care, including some chemical sunscreen filters, Pha's, things like transdermal drugs, have been found to be absorbed through our skin due to their molecular size, their solubility, and the concentration of the chemicals themselves.

There was a randomized control trial that was published in JAMA, which is a top peer-reviewed journal, and it showed that these chemicals do indeed penetrate the skin and can be detected in your blood by a plasma test. I can link that for you to read in the show notes. In general, when I talk to dermatologists, they say that there isn't a ton of evidence that the absorption of these chemical filters is harmful. But when I talk to other doctors like MDs who focus on hormone health, they tend to be more wary. Some chemical sunscreen ingredients have been flagged as potential endocrine disruptors in animal studies. Again, these are not human studies, but still something to raise a flag about, and there is evidence of them being found in breast milk. For example, chemical filters like oxybenzone, octinazate, homo saline, and ababenzone have been found in animal studies to mimic estrogen and interfere with testosterone production and thyroid function.

These are classified as endocrine disrupting chemicals as the chemicals mimic hormones and can car. cause dysregulation in your endocrine system. While the effects are not well documented in human studies that is so important for me to just be so, so clear on, animal studies show that some of these chemical filters can cause developmental or reproductive issues in mice. Animal studies typically serve as models for human biology, so it is understandable why this raises concerns for people, even though, again, we have not been able to replicate these findings in human studies. The truth is that the long-term health effects of this absorption are still largely unknown and it is an area where more research is definitely needed. And we hate

admitting when things are unknown. We hate it so, so much. But it is also one of the things that makes me personally trust somebody when they say, hey, we do not have this figured out yet. We do not know should not be a dirty phrase. While the vitamin A and hormone disruption links in humans are not definitively proven and the benzene issue was a contamination problem rather than an inherent ingredient flaw, these concerns have rightly pushed us to ask more questions. If you are somebody who likes to err on the side of caution, you can lean toward mineral sunscreens containing zinc oxide and titanium dioxide. These types of sunscreens are sometimes referred to as physical sunscreens because they are creating a physical barrier that is preventing the sun's rays

from reaching your skin. While there is some concern that zinc oxide and titanium oxide can also be absorbed into the skin, this risk is mitigated with non-nanosync. This basically just means that the zinc particles are larger so they cannot penetrate your skin. Unfortunately, those larger particles also lead to a white cast, which companies will sometimes try to mitigate by adding tint to their products, but it can still present a blending problem, especially for people with darker skin.

This is, however, the main form of sunscreen that I use, mostly because I have been able to easily find ones that work well for me. So swapping it does not feel like a sacrifice, which I recognize is a privilege and is not true for everybody. The next claim that I have seen all over the internet and that I have heard about for my own father is that we should not wear sunscreen because it prevents vitamin D absorption. And so many of us are vitamin D deficient. And vitamin D deficiency has been linked to higher cancer rates. So essentially that sunscreen is increasing our cancer risk versus decreasing it because we need vitamin D to help prevent cancer. So here's the deal. Sunscreen does inhibit vitamin D when 41% of U.S. adults are deficient in vitamin D.

And that is a very low estimate because it's going off with the FDA recommends when doctors on this podcast will often say that we need to shoot above the FDA's recommendations for optimal health. And we're told to wear sunscreen daily, it can feel like conflicting information. The research is pretty clear at this point that vitamin D is absolutely crucial for our health. Lower vitamin D levels are linked to a higher risk of all-cause mortality, and it plays a role in everything from bone health to immune function, to autoimmune diseases, to heart disease, to cancer, to type 2 diabetes, to mental health issues like depression and anxiety. Interestingly, though, there have been a number of studies that have found that sunscreen does not seem to be the reason that we are vitamin D deficient. In a famous Australian study, they assigned

one population sunscreen, and then another population used a non-sensgreen cream, and they had them use it for a summer, and then at the end of the summer, there were not any differences in their vitamin D levels. And if you're like, Liz, wait, how does that make sense if sunscreen blocks vitamin D? The answer is that our vitamin D absorption problem is due to a very complex interplay of factors like diet and lifestyle and time spent outdoors and our skin tone and our geographic location. Many of us cannot actually get enough vitamin D from the sun to have adequate levels in our blood because of where we live. So it's like, why expose yourself to potential UV risk when you're not even getting the vitamin D benefits? You can also supplement with vitamin D, which has been clearly shown at this point to increase vitamin D levels in our bodies.

And it lets us get a known consistent dose, which is incredibly beneficial, especially if you are somebody who has a diagnosed deficiency. It is convenient, it's easy to take. and it completely bypasses the risk of UV damage to your skin. When it comes to wellness, you're going to get the best results by focusing on the big needle movers. A lot of us spend a lot of time trying to optimize that last 1%, which creates a ton of stress and it actually doesn't help our health that much. At the top of the needle mover list, sleep.

And one of the best ways to optimize your sleep is to optimize your mattress, which is why I love avocado green mattress so much. First of all, this mattress is so comfortable. I have the one with the pillow top, which is medium firm, and it's just a dream. I miss it when I travel. It's better than even the fanciest hotel beds. Having a mattress that supports your joints and your body and feels good is going to help you get more sleep and better quality sleep. But then, on top of that, avocado mattresses are made with certified organic cotton wool and latex, and they are made safe and green guard gold certified. They're also Okotech certified, which is the gold standard. I look for it in any

mattresses, sheets, or towels that I buy, which means the materials have been rigorously tested for harmful substances. You can actually look for the Okotech standard 100 label right on the product and I love this part. It includes a traceable certificate number and the name of the testing lab so you know exactly what you're getting. There are no toxic chemicals. There's no harmful off-gassing. It does not smell like it's going to kill you when you unbox it. This is what I mean. I'm not going to swap out all of my clothing, which is that top 1% of optimization. but by making sure that my mattress and my bedding are as good for me as possible, I literally reduce my exposure during a third of my life,

which is a huge needle mover for a one-time swap. I will also note, and this is a me thing, but I sleep super hot, and avocado's materials are really breathable, and it makes me sweat the least of any mattress that I have slept on. And avocado is a certified B-Corp and a 1% for the planet member because caring for yourself and caring for the planet do not have to be. separate things. You can get up to 20% off organic mattresses and more by shopping Avocados President's Day Sale right now at avocadogreenmatress.com. That is avocado greenmatress.com, no code needed.

The number one rule of habits is to make the things that you want easier and the things that you don't want harder. Yet so many of us want to eat healthier, but so few of us actually take the steps to make eating healthier easier. That's where Marley Spoon comes in. What I love about this company and what's different than all of the other companies out there that are doing like stuff in the same arena is that you can customize your choices based on the effort that you want to put in. So if you want them to send you ingredients, so you can make your own 20-minute meal and like get into your chef energy, they'll send it to you to all be in perfect portions so you'll eliminate waste. Great. That's sorted. But they also have meals that you can just heat up.

They have ready-made breakfast, which is always such a tough time of day to get a healthy meal in. They have grab and go snacks. Everything is made from farm fresh produce with high quality proteins and you can select by dietary preferences, including Mediterranean diet, which is the top diet that doctors on this podcast recommend. Also, things like gluten-free, dairy-free, low sodium, anything that you need. The food is so good and it's so gourmet feeling like you feel like you're at a nice restaurant. We're talking like chicken millinese with a crunchy cucumber arugula salad or everything bagel salmon with truffled chive potatoes. My favorite recent meal was the creamy lemon chicken tray bake. I had one of those moments where I looked at my plate and I was like, wait, I made this.

And so quickly, like so easily, it's just so little effort for so much reward. Marley Spoon just makes eating well feel easy instead of stressful. And honestly, that is everything. This new year, fast track your way to eating well with Marley Spoon. Head to marlyspoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals. That is right, up to 25 free meals with Marley Spoon. That is Marley Spoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody. So remember to get the offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals.

When you think about strength and resilience, like your ability to feel energized, to recover well, to stay strong as you get older, what do you think that actually comes from? Most people say working out or good nutrition. And yes, of course that matters. but there is a biological foundation underneath all of that that most people are completely overlooking. I have been diving deep into this lately with the team at timeline and what I've learned has genuinely shifted how I think about my own health. Every single movement that your body makes every step, every workout, every muscle contraction depends on energy produced at the cellular

level. And at the center of that is your mitochondria. Here is the thing that nobody tells you, certainly nobody told me, starting around age 30, are mitochondrial. naturally become less efficient. More get damaged, more become sluggish, and over time that impacts your energy, your strength, your recovery, and your resilience. Most of us respond by pushing more. We're like noticing these things and we're adding in more protein. We're trying to fix it with more supplements.

We're trying to do harder workouts. And those things do help. But timelines research suggests that we also need to be supporting the cellular machinery underneath. And that is exactly what their supplement mitopure does. contains urolithin A, which helps your body clear out damage mitochondria and support healthier ones so that your cells can produce energy more efficiently. Because this is happening to your cells, it's going to impact your entire body, your immune

system, your muscles. One study found that taking mitochondria increased muscle strength by 12% in four months with no change in exercise routine, it's going to impact your energy, your sleep, your skin, your cell health impacts all of this, and urolithin A keeps your cells. healthy. Timeline has done over 15 years of research and testing on this one product, Eurolithinae, which, by the way, most of us lack the gut bacteria to synthesize naturally. That's why many of us need to supplement it to get the benefits. This has become a staple supplement for me. It is my top way to support how I want to look

and feel as I age. Support yourselves and how you age with mitopure gummies from Timeline. Visit Timeline.com slash Liz and save up to 39% on your mitochondopure gummies. That is timeline.com slash Liz. I've also heard people say our ancestors spent their entire lives in the sun and they didn't get skin cancer. So why do I have to avoid the sun now? There is, I think, a very large misconception that if traditional cultures were not slathering on SBF 50, they were just out there naked roasting in the sun.

And this is completely false. Traditional cultures, especially those living in sunny climates or whose lives revolved around outdoor work had incredibly sophisticated and practical ways of protecting themselves from the sun, things that we can actually learn from in the present day. They wore appropriate clothing, think loose-fitting, full-coverage garments that allowed for airflow while shielding the skin. Many ancient cultures had documented practices of wearing long sleeves and pants and head coverings. They designed their homes and cities to maximize shade. They used thick walls. They had small windows. They had narrow streets and they even oriented buildings to block the most intense midday sun in the summer.

They also used sunscreen. Even though it didn't come in a spray can from Walgreens, many cultures used plant-based paste. They use oils. They use muds or clays as topical barriers to protect them from the sun. They often structured their day to avoid the harshest midday sun they worked in the cooler morning or the late afternoon hours. Also, we should note if we are talking about ancestors from before 1970, they had a much more robust ozone layer to protect them from the UV rays than we do right now. While we are working to repair the ozone layer, and we've actually made really amazing stride,

so yay for that, it is not back to what it was even a hundred years ago, so we are still exposed to way more UV rays than our ancestors. It's also important to remember that many cultures who were historically more exposed to intense sun evolved higher levels of melanin in their skin. Melanin acts as a natural barrier, offering an SPF ranging from about 3 to 14. While this is not broad enough to provide full coverage against all UV rays, it primarily blocks UVB and UVA still penetrates, it did offer significant protection. And to be clear, pale white people, like me, have never historically hung out naked in the sun without consequences. There's even historical evidence of Greeks and Romans documenting skin growths and legion, so skin cancer has been around.

And our lifespans have significantly increased. So one of the reasons that cancer rates are going up is simply that we are alive longer than our ancestors. A lot of people are like, no, no, kids used to die more. So if you made it past childhood, you lived a really long time. It is an argument that I've seen a ton in the live like our ancestors communities. But if you look at the data, that's just not true. Yes, child mortality rates have gone down and that is amazing. And life expectancy has gone up across all ages.

So a 50-year-old now can expect to live longer than a 50-year-old did in the 1800s, which again is amazing, but it also creates more time for ourselves to mutate and for cancer to form. People also love to tout the benefits of sun exposure, which I want to be clear are numerous. I love the sun. I am a sun baby. The difference in my mood on a day that is sunny and a day that is cloudy is just, it's wild. It's night and day. I have set up my entire life to live in one of the most expensive places in the world so that I can get as much sun as possible all year long. As we discussed earlier, sun exposure is your body's natural way to produce and synthesize vitamin D. Sunlight hitting your eyes triggers the release of serotonin, which can significantly boost your mood. It might even explain some of these seasonal shifts in our mental well-being. I know that I am much, much happier during the summer.

I wish it were summer all year long. exposure to natural light during the day helps regulate your circadian rhythm, leading to much better sleep at night. Research shows that sunlight can directly activate T cells and other immune responses, including DNA repair enzymes, helping your body fight off infections. And sun exposure can even play a role in regulating blood pressure through the release of nitric oxide. And, as I always say, the and is so important. There is an extreme amount of scientific consensus around the fact that you, UV rays are carcinogenic, meaning they directly raise our risk of cancer. The evidence currently points to around 90% of all skin cancers being caused by UV exposure. UV rays cause cancer by damaging

the DNA in our skin cells and by creating free radicals, which also damage our DNA. Cumulative lifetime UV exposure can increase risk, as well as really bad burns. I grew up in Arizona and I still remember coming back from a lake vacation one time and we were in an RV because my mom was dating a guy who owned an RV and I was crying so hard because my back was just absolutely covered in these pus-filled blisters that 100% raised by risk of skin cancer. Those types of really bad burns. Those raise our risk of skin cancer quite a bit. Do not be childhood me. Avoid those. The evidence is overwhelmingly clear that sunscreen helps reduce your risk of skin cancers, including the scarier ones like melanoma and squamous cell carcinoma.

It is also one of the absolute best skincare products in existence. If you are spending a ton of money or time on a skincare routine and sunscreen is not in there, you're just wasting your efforts. You're wasting your money, in my humble opinion. Consistent sunscreen use has been the number one thing that has made my skin look good over the years. and I can say this for sure because I'm very lazy about the other steps of my skincare routine. I cycle them in and out, but I have been so incredibly consistent about my sunscreen and my nighttime washing of my face to wash off, said sunscreen.

And this is because I feel like I never hear people talk about this, despite people talking about skin care all of the time. The vast majority of visible skin aging, things like fine lines and wrinkles and dark spots and sagging is actually caused by folks. photo aging, which is premature aging due to sun exposure, specifically UVA rays that penetrate deep into your skin cells and they break down collagen and elastin. When sunscreen blocks or scatters UVA rays from reaching your skin cells and breaking down that precious collagen and elastin, it's essentially acting like a bouncer that keeps out fine lines and wrinkles, which I'm not

opposed to, to be clear, we are pro aging, however the hell you want on this podcast. But it is insane to spend a ton of money on anti-aging potions and products and skip the top thing that prevents skin damage. All of that said, I do think that the research at this point supports being mindful of sunscreen ingredients. Some people will disagree with me and that is completely okay. But I personally use mineral sunscreen. I will specifically use a non-nanosinc oxide which sits on top of the skin and does not penetrate to the bloodstream. There are great brands out there and it just feels like a better to be safe than sorry thing to me. I also do as our ancestors did,

and I use clothing and shade as often as possible as a natural sun protection. Shade alone can block our UV exposure by up to 75%. Typically, I will use sunscreen on my face, and then I'll wear like a rash guard or a light long-sleeved shirt if I'm going to be in the sun for a while. I'll wear a hat with a really big brim. I just got the gloves from prequel, which is Dr. Sam Ellis's, my dermatologist brand.

You can use those when you are hiking or driving. Using clothing as sunscreen makes the what ingredients are in this conversation moot. And honestly, it's just so much easier. You don't have to reapply it. It doesn't feel sticky. You can't wash it off. In terms of the vitamin D thing. Yes, sunscreen inhibits vitamin D synthesis and low vitamin D is a very real concern.

However, researchers agree that the benefits of sun protection outweigh this. This is not medical advice. But what I personally do, again, not recommending, but just sharing what I do is I will try to be in the sun for a few minutes a day without sunscreen and then I will load up on sunscreen after that or just make sure again that my skin is covered with clothing. But being in the sun for five to 15 minutes midday when the UV is high can produce at a minimum 1,000 I use and sometimes way, way more. But in the winter when the UV is low or if you have darker skin, 10 minutes is not going to be enough, which is all the more reason to just get. your vitamin D tested. The amount of people out there who are foregoing sunscreen so they get vitamin D, but they actually have no idea what their vitamin D levels are is wild.

Get your vitamin D levels tested and then supplement if you need it. The very last thing that I want to touch on because we are trying to be as comprehensive as possible here is this idea that you can eat your sunscreen that I keep seeing online. The idea is that antioxidants like carotenoids and polyphenols and vitamin C and omega-3s and asstazanthin, which is found in sockeye salmon, can improve inflammation, and they can reduce oxidative stress, which are part of the negative impacts of sun damage. And surprise, this is actually true. There's quite a bit of evidence that what we eat impacts our skin and that we can support our inflammation levels, we can reduce that oxidative stress, and that can have an impact. Studies even show

that supplementing with beta-carotene, lycopene, or polyphenols can provide some protection against damage from UV light and decrease the severity of sunburn. It is definitely not enough, however, to rely on these nutrients to prevent cell damage from the sun. It's kind of like if you were a house and someone was trying to set you on fire. These types of foods are like a little robot running around the house with a hose, keeping things wet so they don't get burnt, putting things back into place, repairing anything that does catch on fire as well as it possibly can. You will get less damage from the sun exposure and you will be more.

able to repair the damage that you do get. But sunscreen and shade and long sleeves all basically protect you from having someone try to set your house on fire in the first place. Does that make sense? These foods are amazing though and because of the general inflammation lowering, cell repairing effects, they're going to have positive effects far beyond helping mitigate damage from the sun. So they are well worth including in your diet. There haven't been studies on this, but I try to be even more cognizant of including these types of food in my diet because I had such gnarly sunburns when I was a kid. And also, luckily, they're just really the most delicious foods.

Things like sweet potatoes and red peppers and carrots and tomatoes are really great sources of carotenoids. You can find polyphenols and berries. So I have my blackberries that I toss with cardamom, which is so good. And I'll have my raspberries with a little chocolate chip shoved up into their butthole. olive oil and macha are really great sources of polyphenols, which is amazing because I am basically addicted to both of those things. And I do personally take omega-3 supplements because I hate all seafood. I, fun fact, projectile vomit when I eat seafood. But if you are eating seafood regularly as part

of your diet, you are getting great omega-3s. So I would basically say this is a great vote for eating these richly colored whole foods. But we already knew that, right? Like, we have heard about the health benefits of the 30 plants per week over and over and over on this podcast. This is just another vote, like of many, many, many votes in that direction. I hope this was helpful. I can also do a post on our substack, which is at lizmoody.substack.com with all of my favorite sunscreens, like the one that I use for my face and then for reapplying throughout the day. And, and then for my body, as well as my favorite hats and sunprotective clothing. So I will have that up this week at lizmoody.substack.com.

If your dad has also stopped wearing sunscreen, please send him this episode. And also schedule him a dermatologist appointment. Men with daughters and wives outlive men without them. And I think that is in part because men are just so terrible at making their own doctor's appointments. And while we should not have to do that labor, we also don't want them to die, so let's help them out while we work on the mental load equity situation separately. That is actually my last very important point to touch on here, no matter where you stand on sunscreen, please, please, please go to the dermatologist every single year for skin

cancer checks. I have so much health anxiety and I get so nervous before doctor's appointments, but skin cancer is one of those things that's just highly, highly treatable. If you, find it early. And there are even treatments that you can do if something looks kind of fishy that prevent that thing from becoming skin cancer. So you just want to get ahead of it. You want to stay ahead of it. So let's all be brave. Let's just make that appointment one time per year. Zock Dock Dock did not pay for an ad in this episode, but I'm going to shout them out anyways because they make it super easy to find a dermatologist that takes your insurance and has open appointments. And you can check them out at Zocdoch.com slash Liz Moody. Just really great. Like honestly,

turn this podcast, pause the podcast now. Schedule a dermatologist appointment, schedule one for you, and schedule one for one of your loved ones. And we will all cheer each other on. Please send this episode to anyone else who is confused by all of the noise online and just want straight talk on the various wellness trends circulating out there. And if you want me to cover any wellness trend, leave it in a Spotify comment or an Apple review. And I will try to make an episode about it. And also let me know just if you like this new series. If you're into the general idea of it, I am here to serve. You can find all of our discount codes for brand partners that you heard in this episode at Liz Moody.com slash codes. You can find me online at Liz Moody on Instagram and on TikTok.

And that's all we got for today. I love you. I love giving you the information that you need to feel good. And I'll see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast. Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional. I very rarely get genuinely excited about skincare, but this is one of the most innovative products that I have come across in years, and I'm so obsessed with it. I've been telling all of my friends to get it, so now I need to tell you guys. Here's some science first. Your skin isn't just getting older. It's being actively broken.

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