New Sunscreen Protects Your Skin While Your Body Produces Vitamin D: The Future of Sun Protection

A new type of sunscreen may allow your body to continue to produce vitamin D while protecting your skin. Scientists have developed a process for altering the ingredients in sunscreen that could produce a new generation in sun protection.

Sun exposure is a major source of vitamin D for most children and adults. Vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency is a major health problem that afflicts about 40 percent of children and 60 percent of adults worldwide. However, due to the concern for increased risk of skin cancer, widespread sunscreen use has reduced the capacity of the skin to produce vitamin D by almost 98 percent.

There are several chemical compounds that are commonly used in a sunscreen that efficiently absorb varying wavelengths of UVB radiation. After removing certain ingredients, though, researchers were able to create a sunscreen, which they named Solar D, that allowed for sun protection in addition to 50 percent more production of vitamin D in-vitro.

"Solar D was designed with compounds with differing filter compositions to maximize vitamin D production while maintaining its sun protection for reducing erythema or burning of the skin," said Michael Holick, one of the researchers, in a news release.

Solar D could be huge for the future of sunscreen. It could allow for more production of vitamin D, which prevents deficiencies, while at the same time protecting the skin against the sun.

Solar D is currently available in Australia, and will also be available in the United States in the summer of 2016.

The findings are published in the journal PLOS One.

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