Why sweat and heat make your skin so sensitive

I don’t need a thermometer to tell me when the temperature has exceeded 90°F. All I need is my left wrist. That’s where I wear my watch, and the minute the air temperature goes above 90 I get a rash under the band. It is a condition that has several names: rash, prickly heat, eccrine miliaria– and it’s just one of the ways our skin reacts to too much heat, too much sun and the increasingly harsh summers we suffer as climate change raises temperatures around the world. If your skin has been increasingly protesting in hot weather, you’re not remotely alone. Here are the most common heat-related conditions dermatologists are seeing and what you can do about them.

Prickly heat

Your skin is your body’s natural radiator, emitting energy when you get overheated through spiral-shaped sweat-producing glands. When moisture reaches the surface of the skin, it evaporates, moving heat away from the body. The system works even when you don’t feel very hot, but in high temperatures, when you start running sweaty, it speeds up. This can cause problems.

“If your body is sweating faster than your pores can expel it, the sweat gets trapped under the skin,” says Dr. Heather Rogers, a Seattle dermatologist on the clinical faculty at the University of Washington. “The sweat glands get blocked and you get little red, itchy bumps.”

see more information: 8 eating habits that really improve your sleep

Anywhere the skin can’t breathe—on your back or lower thighs when you’re sitting in a patio chair, on the waistband of a bathing suit—will readily develop prickly heat. Babies can develop a rash on their backs when they lie down in the heat. “These are all places where sweat gland occlusion or blockage is most likely to occur,” says Rogers. There’s no way to completely avoid heat rash in hot weather, but wearing loose clothing and moving around to allow your skin to breathe can help. A cool shower can also help rinse surface sweat.

Acne

Teens and teens can suffer especially acutely in hot weather, as acne, which can be controlled in the colder months, flourishes in the heat. Regardless of the season, acne most commonly occurs when pores become clogged by oil, sweat and microscopic dirt, trapping bacteria. The immune system then attacks these sites, leading to more inflammation.

see more information: What is the best type of sunscreen?

“In hot weather, we see an increase in sweat mixing with the sebaceous glands and blocking the pores,” says Dr. Danilo Del Campo, a Chicago-based dermatologist who works at the Chicago Skin Clinic. “Especially in young people, this can lead to an increase in acne.”

“If you’re prone to acne,” says Rogers, “you’ll see it get worse in the summer.”

Here too, showers can help eliminate sweat and oil. Avoiding the worst of the heat by staying home in an air-conditioned environment can also give your skin a break.

Melasma

Women who are or have been pregnant or who use hormonal birth control sometimes develop patchy areas that are darker than the surrounding skin on the cheeks, forehead, nose, or upper lip. Known as melasma, the condition, which can also occur in men, results from overactive melanocytes, the pigment cells in the skin. Melasma may go away on its own, but in some people it may never go away completely.

Extreme heat caused not just by hot weather, but also hot indoor environments like yoga studios can cause melasma flare-ups. In winter or when conditions are cold, the darkening may disappear.

“Melasma is a very, very common thing,” says Rogers. “One in three women will suffer from this. Sun exposure and heat can cause this, and even if you’re not in direct sun, being hot all the time will activate melanocytes and make melasma worse. This is very frustrating for people. The solution is to try to stay calm, use sunscreen and stay out of direct sun.”

Polymorphous luminous eruption

Especially common in women, but present in both sexes, polymorphous light eruption is a rash that usually occurs in the first few days or weeks of summer when the skin is recently exposed to direct heat and sunlight. It appears most commonly on the chest, forearms and backs of the hands, and is believed to be the result of the body’s immune system reacting – or overreacting – to the touch of the sun.

see more information: How to cool down when it’s really hot outside

Interestingly, people are reporting more polymorphous light flares in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, perhaps as a result of immune system sensitization by the virus or the vaccine used to prevent the disease, Rogers says.

“After COVID and after people got vaccinated, the autoimmune flare-ups that we saw as dermatologists increased significantly,” she says. “The idea was that this was related to the immune system being revved up by exposure to COVID.”

“Increased sunlight affects changes in the skin’s immune function,” says Del Campo. Avoiding direct sunlight is the best way to, in turn, avoid illnesses related to the immune system.

Eczema

Usually caused by excessive dryness of the skin, eczema can worsen in the summer as people swim in and out of chlorinated pools, bathe frequently and become dehydrated. Lips can also become chapped for more or less the same reasons. The answer is to stay hydrated, avoid too much sun exposure, and use skin moisturizer and lip balm. “These precautions can prevent your skin from losing too much oil,” says Rogers.

Skin cancer

Most sun-related skin problems happen in real time, in the short term. Skin cancer plays the long game – and it doesn’t take a lot of sun exposure to cause damage. Just two blistering sunburns can increase a person’s risk of long-term illness. melanomaa serious form of skin cancer that starts in melanocytes, says Rogers.

See more information: Because you He must Never pop a pimple

“If you get skin cancer, it’s not because you got a sunburn that summer, but usually 10 to 30 years earlier,” she says. That’s because “you collect sun damage that leads to mutations in your skin cells,” she says. “O [cells] Those who are truly damaged die. Those that are somewhat damaged do not die and can develop into skin cancer in the future.”

For reasons that are not entirely clear, men are more likely than women develop melanoma by age 50 and are also more likely to die from it. White people are more likely to develop melanoma than black people, but black people develop the disease, and it is often detected too late because individuals and their doctors tend not to look for it as vigilantly, according to Rogers.

O The Skin Cancer Foundation recommends daily use of broad-spectrum sunscreen with an SPF of at least 15 to help prevent skin cancer; for prolonged sun exposure, SPF should be 30 or higher. Sunscreen should be applied every two hours or, if you are going into the water or sweating a lot, every hour.