Dermatologist Shares The 4 Places You Should Never Miss When You Apply Sunscreen
There’s no such thing as a good skin cancer, but there are some spots that fare far worse than most.
It seems all the girlies these days have a skincare routine. TikTok is positively awash with recommendations for various cleaners, oils, toners, serums and moisturizers. Any dermatologist will tell you that the most important step in anyone’s skincare routine is sunscreen, but it’s a step too many people skip.
Dr. Bonnie Hodge, a dermatologist on TikTok, understands that few people are going to get it right all the time. So she recently made a post to share the most important places never to skip in order to protect yourself from skin cancer, jokingly referring to those who aren’t as militant in their sun protection as “B and C students.”
In other words, this PSA is for people who aren’t great at putting on sun block — or who have kids who are hard to get ahold of as soon as the SPF bottles come out.
“I’ve been practicing long enough to know when I tell a patient that you practice near-perfect sun protection is not going to happen,” she explains. “So this message is for people who are kind of good at putting sun screen on, but kind of not. I’m trying to give you a realistic in-between of what to actually focus on. So what I’m going to tell you about are areas you really don’t want skin cancer. ... There are certain areas that are easier to excise and sew it back up, and there are certain areas that are a nightmare.”
Spoilers: those nightmare spots tend to be areas of the body where you don’t have a lot of skin to begin with and, therefore, cannot afford to lose any.
Nose
“How are you going to sew that up?” she says bluntly. “It’s rare that nose surgeons are able to do what’s called a primary closure, meaning you just sew the two sides together. They often have to do these complex repairs called a flap repair or maybe even a skin graft. So protect your nose. Do not let it get sunburnt.”
Lips
As with the nose, there’s not a whole lot of tissue to work with on the lips, and that tissue is far more unique than the rest of your skin. As such, repairs are quite complicated.
So wear SPF lip balm. (Free, not-sponsored advice: I like this one from MD Solar Sciences. It even comes in colors.)
Ears
“I’ve seen people have the top half of their ear just gone,” Hodge says. “It’s a very complex structure.”
And, truly: have you ever looked at an ear? So many twists and turns and very little skin to be had.
Scalp
To demonstrate why this is such a difficult area to perform surgery on and repair, Hodge offers a demonstration.
“I want you to do a test for me. Pinch your forearm skin. See how much skin there is? So if I had to cut a skin cancer out there, [it’s] no problem to sew that back together,” she explains. “Pinch your scalp. You can’t pinch it. So if you use your imagination and you cut a hole out where there’s skin cancer, it’s hard to put that together.”
Most surgeons will have to do flap repairs and it takes a long time to heal.
So if you or someone you love is bald, has a bald spot, thinning hair that exposes the scalp, or even if you wear braids (i.e. exposing more of your scalp by parting your hair in different spots), be sure to spray some sunscreen on those areas.
“Everywhere else on your body, it’s not ideal to get skin cancer, but typically, depending on the sight, there’s enough skin laxity to cut it out and sew it up. But these are the hot areas,” she concludes.
Look, ideally we’re spending sufficient time getting full coverage any time we’re out in the sun. But life gets in the way of our best plans and safest practices. So if you’re so busy you have to be quick in your skincare preparations, remember NELS : nose, ears, lips, scalp!
