Popular sunscreen claims graded against the actual evidence.
Affiliate links below, but they cost you nothing extra. We only point you to what the ingredient lists actually back up. Every vegan Korean sunscreen box makes two promises at once. The tube says vegan. The same tube says cruelty-free. Those are two different promises, checked by two different organizations against two different rulebooks, and…
The 50+ printed on your sunscreen looks like a fact about what’s in the tube. It isn’t. It’s a measurement, taken once, from a product smeared on the backs of ten volunteers in one lab on one day. And in 2020 the whole skincare internet found out what happens when someone pays to take that…
In 2019 a research team reviewed everything published on sunscreen and vitamin D. In 2025 the same team ran their own trial and got a different number. The short version: the question of sunscreen and vitamin D deficiency got a new answer last year, and it’s a small one rather than a scary one. In…
Affiliate links below, but they cost you nothing extra. We only point you to what the ingredient lists actually back up. If you’ve given up on a sunscreen because of how it smelled, you already know the protection you skip is the protection you don’t get. So it’s worth knowing which words on the packaging…
The study that gets cited for UV detection stickers opens by saying the quiet part out loud. Sunscreen applied at the recommended 2 mg/cm² has been shown to block UV damage in vivo, the authors write, but “in real world conditions, however, sunscreen is often not applied/reapplied sufficiently to yield protection.”[1] That’s the problem these…
No affiliate links in this one. Just what actually raises your sun protection, and what only claims to. The pitch is tempting: a few drops of a serum, an antioxidant, or a “SPF booster” mixed into your routine, and your sun protection climbs for free. It would be great if it worked that way. It…
Walk down any drugstore aisle while you’re expecting and the words practically glow: pregnancy safe sunscreen, printed in soft pastel letters like a promise. It feels reassuring, and that’s exactly the problem. No agency defines that phrase, nobody certifies it, and the real question it’s quietly answering has less to do with the front of…
Scroll any skincare shop right now and you’ll spot it: blue light sunscreen, promising to shield your face from your laptop, your phone, and the glow of modern life. It’s a clever pitch, because we do stare at screens all day and it feels like that has to cost us something. So does a blue…
SPF 100 looks like it should be twice as strong as SPF 50. The number is double, so surely the protection is too. Then you walk into a Korean drugstore, scan the sunscreen shelf, and the biggest number you can find is SPF50+. Not 70, not 90, definitely not 100. So what’s going on? Is…
Affiliate links below, but they cost you nothing extra. We only point you to what the ingredient lists and the science actually back up. In 1982, the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology published a review asking a blunt question: does dabbing an ingredient on a rabbit’s ear actually predict whether it clogs pores…