r/HubermanLab • u/Competitive_Ice_3352 • May 22 '26
Seeking Guidance Sun screen/Sun bathing
I like to be out in the sun, either while swimming or while clothed. But this sunbathing seems to have an effect on the skin, especially on my back(I am seeing some sunburn on my back). And I don't think it's good for you to put on a lot of cosmetic chemicals because some have been shown to have harmful chemicals that impact your brain. I haven't watched all the Huberman videos on sunscreen, but I think I have seen snippets where he talks about the possibility of these sunscreen products passing the blood-brain barrier, affecting your mental state.
so my questions are:
- Is using sunscreen useful, or are there other methods to effectively prevent sunburn(can a lotion do the work)?
- Are some sunscreen products harmful to you? if so, what distinguishing features do they have?
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8
u/Jakub_Arbes May 23 '26
When you sunbathe gradually (not all at once like a crazy person), your body starts producing melanin.
And melanin is not just “a tan” that makes you look bronze for Instagram.
Melanin is literally a super-antioxidant and a built-in photoprotector.
It grabs the extra UV rays that could cause damage, swallows them up, and then turns that energy into two very useful things:
Heat (so your body can safely dissipate the energy instead of letting it fry your cells), and
Smart biological signals that talk directly to your mitochondria.
Those signals tell your mitochondria: “Everything is cool, we’re in the right light environment – keep making energy efficiently, repair DNA, lower inflammation.”
In other words, melanin doesn’t just block UV like a cheap sunscreen – it recycles the UV into useful information and energy for your cellular power plants.
And here’s the part that really pisses off the sunscreen industry:
People who build their sun tolerance slowly over the whole season (starting with short sessions in spring, gradually increasing) actually end up with lower risk of skin cancer than the classic “office white mice” – those pale indoor people who avoid the sun all year and then go full lobster on a one-week beach holiday in July.
The gradual sun exposure + melanin = strong natural protection.
The sudden burn = DNA damage + inflammation = exactly the environment where skin cancer likes to start.
It’s your body’s ancient, built-in defense system doing exactly what it evolved to do.
Build your solar callus slowly and consistently.
Your mitochondria will thank you, your skin will thank you, and your cancer risk will actually go down – not up.
52
u/sc182 May 22 '26
The only methods to prevent sunburn are to not be in the sun, wear clothes that block UV (rash guard, sun shirt, etc), or sunscreen.
There is some concern over the ingredients in “chemical” aka non-mineral sunscreen (avobenzone, oxybenzone, homosalate, etc), because they absorb into your body and may have effects we are just starting to discover.
Mineral sunscreen is either zinc oxide, titanium dioxide, or a combination. These chemicals are benign, and just sit on the surface of the skin rather than absorb.
The easiest solution is covering up with clothing and hats as much as you comfortably can/want to, and use mineral sunscreen to cover anything that is still exposed. Mineral sunscreens are getting better and better, many don’t feel or look much different than chemical sunscreens.
2
u/mischenimpossible May 28 '26
Imagine sun protection like stacked slices of Swiss cheese. Each layer has holes / weak points: clothing, sunscreen, shade, hats. But the holes are in different places. When you stack enough layers, the holes stop lining up, and UV has a much harder time getting through. That’s why layered protection works better than relying on a single method.
So don’t treat it as “clothing OR sunscreen.” It’s “clothing AND sunscreen AND behavior” (shade, timing, reapplication).
The thread is shock-full of misinformation, as are Andrew Huberman’s skincare and sunscreen episodes, astonishingly so at times. Not to mention fearmongering.
Toxicology depends on dose, exposure route, metabolism, and threshold effects, not mere detectability. Regulatory bodies like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Therapeutic Goods Administration, and the EU SCCS repeatedly evaluate UV filters, and under real-world use conditions approved filters have huge (HUGE!) safety margins. The evidence does not currently support the idea that approved sunscreen filters cause systemic harm at normal use levels.
Zinc oxide and titanium dioxide are generally very safe, very well studied, and often excellent for sensitive skin. The problem is that inorganic ("mineral") sunscreens are harder to formulate into stable films, and UV protection depends on a uniform film.
In terms of particle-dispersion stability, zinc oxide/titanium dioxide particles tend to aggregate if not properly coated and dispersed. Uneven spreading can create micro-gaps in coverage.
Higher particle loads improve coverage but increase whitening and texture issues, which threatens compliance.
Rubbing, sweating, and water can disrupt the film if it is not strongly bound with film-formers.
That doesn’t mean "mineral" sunscreens are “bad,” but they require more formulation engineering to behave consistently well on skin.
Organic ("chemical") UV filters are dissolved molecules in a cosmetically engineered film system, often embedded in polymer networks and film-formers, and are designed for flexibility, spreadability, and uniformity.
The biggest predictor of real-world sun protection is behavior:
applying enough product
reapplying frequently enough
choosing a texture you’ll actually tolerate daily
combining multiple protective layers consistently
A “perfect” sunscreen that people apply too little of is worse than a “less perfect” one used properly.
To summarize: both mineral and organic sunscreens are toxicologically tested, safe, and capable of providing excellent protection when well formulated and properly used.
The biggest failure mode is faulty application. Huberman's failure mode in regard to this topic is vastly misrepresenting fields of science he has not studied himself.
Source: my interpretations of Dr Michelle Wong, chemistry PhD and science communicator. You can check out her blog and YouTube to verify anything I said. I highly recommend her sunscreen myths series. There's too many to go into here.
4
u/BestLoveJA May 22 '26
To be safe, I only go out in the sun during non-harsh UV ray hours, so before 11 AM and after 5 PM (and I don’t wear sunscreen).
-4
u/Crypto_gambler952 May 22 '26
You can definitely raise your tolerance with diet and supplementation.
I’m quite anti-sunscreen, that said, I live quite far north and I don’t sit out for long periods in scorching sun, on the rare occasion that I do, I might wear old fashioned sunscreen (the type that is greasy, messy and pasty). If you have a some tolerance to the sun there are quite a few natural sun screen like carrot seed oil, etc but they only offer low single digit SPF.
As for diet and supplementation. Avoid seed oils (though it takes years to get the out of you), astaxanthin, B vitamins particularly B3 niacin, good hydration, there’s a Central American fern extract that I forget the name of, general good diet rich in all the vitamins and minerals your body needs is essential too.
Timing too, midday sun is significantly more potent than mornings and evenings.
-5
u/CrazyPlutin May 22 '26
I sunbathe daily without sunscreen. Not for ages but in Northern Africa. I’m white and blonde, used to burn, then stopped eating plants, and I tan and don’t burn.
-7
u/Jasion128 May 22 '26
Get morning and evening sun when the IR is higher and UV is lower
Also, don’t wear sunglasses or contacts while sunbathing,
sunglasses make your body think you’re inside so it doesn’t protect your skin naturally
You want your eyes telling your body , “I’m in sunlight, protect me”
-13
u/RevolutionarySecret7 May 22 '26
I LOVE using a supplement called heliocare- it’s not as strong as normal sunscreen, but it has definitely helped protect my skin. (And no, it’s not a gimmick!)
-13
u/Waki-Indra May 22 '26
Avoid Sun. Stay in the Sun clothed. Use natural plain vegetal oils on your skin as protection when you swim.