Sunscreen for Women, How to Choose a Sunscreen That Actually Protects Your Skin | Mark Mitchnick

Natalie Tysdal (00:00)

Mark, thank you so much for joining me today.

mark (00:02)

Thank you.

Natalie Tysdal (00:03)

This is a topic I have not covered in the two hundred plus episodes. We we talk about skin, we talk about the sun, but tell me why this is important to you and and how you got focused on this as a business.

mark (00:17)

yeah, so I'll try to do this briefly. So the way I started as a business when I'm I'm a pediatrician by training and when I was in my residency, I had an idea for a a watch you could wear and it would tell you how much sun you've gotten and you know when it was time to get out of the sun you could plug in your skin type and what sunscreen you're wearing, you know, some other stuff. so that turned out to be a really bad idea. but my brother and I started a company anyhow, and along the way we we

determined or discovered that transparent zincide is possible. So the white stuff everybody w you know wears didn't have to be white. it was white because the way the industry made it and used it. so we spent a couple of years figuring out how to make it transparent in a way that it was also affordable and we started a company around that. So it wasn't I was originally interested in sunscreens, but I got very interested in it when when we s sort of stumbled upon this fact. and then

For a long time we sold that ingredient. We sold it to all the major companies you can think of. And then we sold the company that did that. So wh why is sun important? Because so it's the sun is the is is sort of the prototypical double-edged sword. you y you literally can't live without it. and I mean that in a very literal sense. but too much of it causes a lot of problems for humans. and so

there's a there's a smart way and and thankfully not a very difficult way to get outside a lot and enjoy yourself. and we are we mean my family, we're kind of outdoor nuts and so it it's it it plays into what we like to do anyhow.

Natalie Tysdal (02:01)

Well, I live in Colorado and so we love to be outside. We are closer to the sun, a mile high. but I think that for a lot of women specifically, we want the sun, we want to feel sun-kissed. It's such a healthy feeling, but we don't know when it's too much. And we are all buying products, and a lot of the products are now in makeup and in the everyday things we use. But what give me an idea of some of the products.

That are good and some that we should not be so confident in, why it matters what's in our sunscreen.

mark (02:38)

Sure. So depends what you want out of the sunscreen. So if you're just, you know, going out walking the dog, you know, f first I should I should say that even from somebody who makes a sunscreen for a living, y you don't need to wear sunscreen all the time. All right. I mean if you if you want to die wrinkle free when you're ninety-five years old, yeah, you probably need to wear a sunscreen. But if you wanna, you know, age relatively normal and look pretty darn good.

You need to wear a sunscreen when you're getting a lot of sun exposure. but if seven o'clock in the morning, even the middle of summer, eight o'clock in the morning in Colorado and you're out walking the dog fifteen or twenty minutes, you the the sunscreen is really not necessary. now that that assumes that you don't have some medical issue that requires sunscreen, that you're not on a drug that makes you really sensitive to the sun, that you don't have lupus or some something that you know, you know, puts you in in in the in the extreme.

So having said all that, if you don't put sunscreen on in the morning, it means you'll never get around to it, then putting it on in the morning is just a really good habit to be in. so leave that unless you want to talk more about about you know when you need a sunscreen, when you don't. so what to what to look for in a sunscreen if you're just out for a walk, you're not really doing anything particularly athletic where you're not gonna sweat, you're not gonna be in the water or something.

A sunscreen that is not waterproof, not water resistant, is probably okay. but if you're gonna be doing anything where you're sweating, you're gonna be in the water, you wanna find a sunscreen that says on it water resistant. And the United States can be water resistant for 40 minutes or 80 minutes. you're not allowed, we the manufacturers are not allowed to say anything other than those two things. so I would suggest the 40 minutes really is not that useful. so if you're gonna

look for a water resistant sunscreen, go for 80 minutes. If you're looking for something that is completely transparent, has no white cast at all, then you're going to look for ingredients that include zinc oxide, which is the thing that you know we're famous for, along with some of the traditional organic sunscreens. Because you can't get a high SPF with pure zinc oxide without getting that white cast.

Natalie Tysdal (05:01)

Yeah, yeah.

mark (05:01)

Yeah, it's just not physically possible. And in fact, when you see sunscreens that say SPF fifty, ten percent zinc oxide, something is wrong. and that's a product to avoid.

Natalie Tysdal (05:14)

So okay, let let's talk about the zinc oxide, why it matters. What is it in the zinc oxide that that actually protects and how much is it protecting?

mark (05:24)

Yeah, so this gets a little in the weeds, so I apologize ahead of time. Yeah, so

Natalie Tysdal (05:29)

Try to make it as simple as possible.

mark (05:31)

so the the organic sunscreen, w which are also called chemical sunscreens, which it's kind of goofy, right? Everything's a chemical. You're you're a bag of chemicals, right? If there's you know, the only thing without chemicals is a void, like you know, the middle of space. but people break it up into chemical, non chemical, the org the inorganic or the mineral or the not are the

non-chemical sunscreen, zinc oxide and titanium dioxide be in the two, zinc oxide is much more popular because it's not as white. so what is it actually doing? So the organic sunscreens, the chemical sunscreens, the sun hits it and the molecule absorbs it and it you know absorbs a bunch of energy. It's got to do something with that energy. So it actually kicks it back out as a little bit of heat. So if you want a heat camera, a really really good heat camera,

You could see the sunscreen actually generating a tiny bit of heat as it converted that ultraviolet radiation to heat. so zinc oxide, people mistakenly think that it's kind of like a mirror where the sun hits it and it just bounces off. It's actually not how it works. it works just like the organic sunscreens. so think of think of a solar cell. The sun hits it, it takes that energy and turns it into electricity. With zinc oxide, which

Little in the weeds is also semiconductors, just like the stuff in the solar cell from that from that perspective. The sun hits it and it changes it to another form of energy, in this case a tiny bit of heat, just like the organic sunscreens. Does that make sense?

Natalie Tysdal (07:07)

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. So if you're if you're using a sunscreen that doesn't have zinc oxide in it, are you getting protection?

mark (07:16)

Yeah, yeah. And so you're getting protection because the FDA tells you you're getting protection and they have real specific rules. So part of your question I didn't answer. Zinc oxide is a great UVA s a block. So you can loosely break up the s sun's radiation, the ultraviolet part, into UVB and UVA. So it goes UVB, UVA, visible, right? And this is the the wavelength of the of the light. So traditionally UVB is what burns you.

UVA is is assigned some different sorts of damage. And then there's visible the stuff you can see. So zinc oxide protects well into the UVA. Most sunscreens only protect UVB. There's a few that protect into the UVA. But zinc oxide is by far the broadest spectrum on its own. Now, if you have a certain amount of zinc oxide, say a formula is 5% zinc oxide, and it's 5% of

Something called octinoxate, which is one of the most popular organic sunscreens. Even though zinc oxide protects UVB, you're going to get a much higher SPF off the octinoxate than you will off the same amount of zinc oxide. So there's a trade-off. And that's why, in our view, anyhow, and lots of lots of experts' views, the best products use some mineral sunscreen in combination with the organic sunscreens, so they're called hybrid sunscreens or combination sunscreens.

Natalie Tysdal (08:42)

If you're just say you're putting like me, you're you're putting a mineral sunscreen on, mine's in my makeup,

mark (08:49)

Mm-hmm.

Natalie Tysdal (08:49)

and you put it on in the morning, is it lasting throughout the day?

mark (08:54)

it probably is, right? You don't really know. so first of all, do you do you find yourself getting burned if you're out later in the day?

Natalie Tysdal (09:03)

Well, I'm I'm lucky. I I guess lucky, you'll have to tell me. I don't burn. I I a lot of people burn quickly. I will tan, which might be just, you know, as bad, but I don't burn quickly. Other people in my family, my friends, they certainly do, but that's the case for me.

mark (09:23)

So it it it's probably still good, and I'll tell you why the instructions say something else on the back of the tube. especially if it's just zinc oxide, because some of the organic sunscreens can actually degrade in the sun. You give them give them a long enough time. especially one called Abubenzone, which is a UVA sunscreen that you see a lot of. you gotta do some tricks to make sure that doesn't happen, which is one of the reasons you know we're not big fans of it. but if you're you know you put on

you know, foundation or something and it's got a bunch of zinc oxide in it. you know, if the foundation is still there, the zinc oxide's probably still there. but, you know, if you if you took a shower or you rubbed your face, you know, if you remove the makeup, you're removing the zinc oxide, for sure. the FDA has very strict rules what you can say about a sunscreen. So you if you if you look look at the back of a sunscreen tube, they all look the same. and that's because the FDA s tells us exactly what we can say.

So it's got to list the active ingredients, it's got to have some instructions. And one one of the set of instructions is apply every two hours. And even though a sunscreen might be water resistant for five hours, it doesn't matter. You've got to say on the back of it, apply every two hours. And that's just the FDA protecting us against ourselves in some ways.

Doesn't really matter. I mean the sunscreen's working the moment you put it on. but it's a reminder. Don't go outside until you have your sunscreen on and then let it dry of course because if you go out with it it hasn't dried down, you'll put clothes on or something else and you'll you'll rub it off.

Natalie Tysdal (11:04)

What information do you think the general public is missing or needs to know or th is just not out there?

mark (11:14)

Yeah, there's a lot of that. All right. and it's more around what what they what what what's out there that's just wrong. so there there's a there's a ton of stuff about sunscreens causing cancer. Right? I'm sure you've seen that. there there is literally zero evidence for that. and there's huge amount of evidence to say it prevents it cancer. but that's out there.

There is a lot of stuff out there about some of the organic sunscreens being estrogenic. in other words, they they act like estrogen, so so they're there are ho home excuse me, hormone disruptors. if you look at the literature, right, real science behind this, there was one sunscreen that might have been in real-world use, nobody ever uses it anymore. but those papers talk about people putting on

Huge amounts of sunscreen for days in a row, being able to find it in the blood, and then making the leap that that's actually doing something. But the but people have looked and it's not doing anything, and it's in there at you know nanogram amounts, so parts per billion billion. so an a another sort of myth. the other myth is, and this comes from the guy, you know, I literally invented transparent zinc oxide, so nobody likes it more than I do. but it can't do everything for everybody.

and so the notion that, you know, pure mineral sunscreens are the only good ones is is wrong and and it actually gets in the way. It's it's it's a it's a harmful idea because a lot of people won't wear pure mineral sunscreens and so it prevents them from wearing sunscreens or prevents them from wearing it alone.

Natalie Tysdal (12:59)

Is the the product that you created in multiple products you've said or a product that you sell? Or tell me about that.

mark (13:07)

Yeah, so in nineteen ninety-one, a long time ago, I I invented the idea of using transparent zinc oxide. So nanoparticles are very small particles of zinc oxide, are transparent to our eyes, at least when they're on the skin, but they work really well as sunscreens. and so it's not white but absorbs the ultraviolet light. And you know, I won't bore everybody with the physics behind that, but that that's the way it works. and so we had patents on that and and we sold that.

whole thing to a company called BSF, which is a very large chemical company who supplies sunscreen active. So that ingredient was sold to a bunch of companies. We did not have our own brand at that time. So it was it was an oil volet, it was in Shoshato products. It was, you know, you name a product that had zinc oxide in it. And until 2012 it was that zinc oxide because that's when the patents expired. and now there's a number of manufacturers and I'm no longer connected to it. So I I can't tell you who uses what.

But last year my son and I launched our own brand. and of course we use zinc oxide because we we know and love the love the chemical. but we use it in conjunction with some of the organic sunscreens.

Natalie Tysdal (14:18)

And and that product, how is it different from others?

mark (14:22)

so it's called Burn B U R N D. and you know, as I said, sunscreens are really highly regulated in the United States and in Europe too, in Japan, pretty much of the whole world.

we all use the same active ingredients. some of us can be more clever about the combinations that we use. as I mentioned, we like to use a combination of of a few. there's a new one coming out, actually just became legal. We can talk about that in a second. but the real difference in in most sunscreens is the formulation. So in an SPF 30 is an example, ours is a 41.

But you know, there might be 10, 12, excuse me, 10 or 20% sunscreen of the active, the zinc oxide in the organics, and the rest is the other stuff in a formulation. and that dictates how it feels. Is it water resistant, how fast it dries, can you put makeup on or, you know, on over it? You know, all those other properties. Turns out that it's not that easy and it's relatively expensive to make a really graceful high SPF sunscreen.

and so that's what we've done. When we originally formulated this, it was literally done for friends and family, so we weren't thinking about what could we make a billion pounds of. You know, what can I make for, you know, a dollar, you know, a tube as opposed to a dollar three a tube, which is what all the big companies have to think about. so it's our product is is highly water resistant. Again, we can only say eighty minutes, but we know because we've got a lot of pro surfers work using it, that it's very good. It stays on.

it because of the way the formulation is built, something called reverse emulsion, which again I won't torture people with unless you want to know. but it allows for a very good film that actually has a little lattice, and so so instead of being like a perfect film, it's got tiny little holes in it, kind of like Gore-Tex, you you know, Gore-Tex breathes. The film actually breathes. so a lot of, you know, people will tell you if I have a really high SPF, especially a pure mineral one that's kind of greasy by nature.

I can't sweat through it, right? Which is really uncomfortable. a reverse emulsion, a water and silicone emulsion like we use, you can actually breathe through, or your skin can breathe through. So there's four or five things like that that make it unique. And it really comes down to the attention we we we we paid to it as opposed to doing or using an ingredient that others can't use because that can't happen. We all have to use the same ingredients.

Natalie Tysdal (16:50)

so the products that you create, is it just one product? Is it a body and a face or different products?

mark (16:56)

Yep. is it okay if I show it? So it's

Natalie Tysdal (16:58)

Yeah, you sure can. For those watching.

mark (17:01)

it's it's one product and this this is another sort of misconception. If if something is not good enough for your face, do you do you want to put it on your feet? I mean, you know it it's you know, the the the there's a lot of marketing behind all personal care stuff, but but sunscreens and sunscreens are are no different. So we we right now we make a single product. There's others coming, but they're not because one is good for your face, one's not.

so it's it's a super gentle formula. It was designed to be that way. It's actually moisturizing. We could legally call it a moisturizer if we wanted to. and again the FDA regulates that sort of claim. We could make it, but the label is crowded enough, so we don't do that. and again it it's yeah, you know, w we find it kind of split. There's a lot of people using it as a body sunscreen. It's affordable enough to do that. many people are using it as just a facial sunscreen because that's all they do.

We didn't really go after it, but I'm pleased to see because I'm a pediatrician. We have a lot of families buying it. and so, you know, for that it's not that cheap. So we we've offered, you know, you buy four tubes, you get one free sort of thing, to to bring down the price point so that it it it's affordable to you know to schmear it all over your kid, you know, two times a day. so that's the current sunscreen. in a couple months we'll have a a tinted sunscreen.

because folks asked us for it. So same sort of technology. and earlier I said you can't get a high SPF with zinc oxide alone. There's an exception to that, and that's the tinted products. because then tinted products you can hide the whiteness. and so you you can you can get, I think ours is a 36 or something, it's well up there. and that is being there's a lot of testing that has to get done before we go to market. So right it's in the middle of that testing, but when it's done sometime early fall.

we'll introduce that. and then we have a stick that'll be out sometime this year.

Natalie Tysdal (18:56)

That's great. Yeah, I th I find that for myself and my family, the simplicity of different products for different parts of your body what makes me use them. I you would probably understand the the chemistry behind it, but the the the product I use on my face now, it it's white when it comes out, but it tints when I put it on. And I love it. I use it as a foundation and it's just a sunscreen. and then they also make a powder form for your hair.

and for other things. And it again, that's easy to throw in my purse. So I put that out and you can just brush it in your hairline and sometimes on your face. so it's the simplicity of it that that I find makes people use it, especially when it comes to sprays, which is what I want to ask you about. Because a lot of families when you're at the pool, they like to just spray it on their kid really quick. Are you getting the same coverage when you're using something like a spray? Does that have the right ingredients?

Or

can it have the right ingredients

mark (19:53)

Yeah, so

Natalie Tysdal (19:54)

in it?

mark (19:55)

so so sprays are are kind of a you know, not the best idea. Okay.

Natalie Tysdal (19:59)

Mm-hmm. But

that's what a lot of families use because it's easy and kids like it better. Mm-hmm.

mark (20:02)

They do use it. Yeah, well the kids kids are moving target, right? And you know, and so

so if you've ever been downwind from a spray, you know one reason why it's not a good, you know, like

Natalie Tysdal (20:11)

Yeah.

mark (20:12)

I I golf a lot and you know, I'm you know, at the back of my car putting my shoes on and all of a sudden, you know, I'm breathing in sunscreen from some guy thirty five feet away.

Natalie Tysdal (20:20)

Yeah.

mark (20:20)

the other thing about you know, people think that because it's a spray, it won't get on my hands. But the sprays don't really work unless you rub in because you you don't get a unif you so you you get it on your hands anyhow.

they're expensive, a lot of them are alcohol-based. I have nothing against alcohol-based products, but a lot of folks do. And then we just answered a customer's question about pilling, what sunscreens pill and what don't. Because the way you have to formulate a spray, if you just think about it, it's got to be super thin, right? Novus,

Natalie Tysdal (20:51)

Mm.

mark (20:52)

not thick at all, otherwise it can't get out of the nozzle. Those tend to be based on kind of the same polymers that you make you make ink out of.

so it's it's it's very liquid, the water or the alcohol evaporates off, and now you've got this sort of plastic film that dries in your skin. all of which is fine from a from a safety perspective. But those film formers tend to pill. especially if you put something on it or not. And you've probably had this experience or or or if you golf, you know, if you get it on your hands, you do this, all of a sudden you've got all this junk

Natalie Tysdal (21:24)

Yeah.

mark (21:24)

on your hands. So not a big spray fan. We probably won't have one unless people really bug us. but

Natalie Tysdal (21:32)

Is it just a a watered down alcohol base of your product?

mark (21:36)

A lot of them are.

Natalie Tysdal (21:37)

They're watering it down, putting alcohol in it so it can spray.

mark (21:40)

no, that wouldn't that wouldn't work with ours. You're you're not gonna be able to maintain that that that reverse

Natalie Tysdal (21:44)

Mm-hmm.

mark (21:44)

emulsion in a spray format.

Natalie Tysdal (21:47)

Mm.

mark (21:47)

and so you're gonna have to go to other strategies to make it water resistant. and frankly, nothing is as good as that. So, you know, another thing that people talk about and this this relates is reef safety. Right? So so first of all, there's probably nothing really good for the reef, right?

Yeah, you know, so so the notion

Natalie Tysdal (22:07)

Yeah.

mark (22:08)

that something might be good and something might be bad, you know, i you know, the the reef is best left alone. there are some sunscreens that certain localities why have singled out. Again, the literature doesn't actually support it. but the best way to to keep sunscreen out of the reef is to keep the sunscreen on your body. Right? And that that's the tack that we take. you know

Again, with the technology we use, burn is formulated to stay on you and not go in the water. And that is that I think is the smartest. And just as an aside, so Hawaii's got a list of a couple ingredients you can't use. They don't say you can use the others, they say don't use these. and so a very big manufacturer, I'm not gonna name them only because I'm not it's I'm not sure which of the two I'm thinking of it is. but Hawaii's actually suing.

Because they said reef safe. And they said it based on the fact that they did not have these two ingredients. And Hawaii has come back and said, Well, did you test the thing you do have for reef safety? And they of course said no because that is a you know, that's a decade long billion dollar test. and so Hawaii say you can't say reef safe because you don't

Natalie Tysdal (23:24)

Wow.

mark (23:25)

know. And I think that that makes a lot of sense. None of us know. So so

Natalie Tysdal (23:28)

Yeah. Who knew?

I didn't I didn't know that that was an issue with

safety.

mark (23:32)

It's a huge issue, yeah.

Natalie Tysdal (23:33)

Yeah, yeah, but I live in Colorado, so I don't hear as much about that. yeah, right,

mark (23:37)

Yeah. Yeah. Well you used to be a reef, you know, a couple hundred million years ago.

Natalie Tysdal (23:40)

right. We didn't have sunscreens then to harm them. Well, anything else that you think is important for people to know in when they're going out and they're buying products for themselves, for their families, their kids, anything else that we didn't talk about?

mark (23:55)

So the you know, a couple of little little sayings we like to use. So the best sunscreen is the one you're gonna use, right? So if you find one you like, stick with it. we think there's lots of reasons burn is good, but the the major thing is is is find one that you'll use constantly because an SPF 50 that you don't use is an SPF of exactly zero.

Natalie Tysdal (24:14)

Mm. Yeah.

mark (24:15)

and so that that's probably the key thing. definitely get your kids in the habit of doing it. and the best way to get your kids in the habit of doing it is you to do it.

so I I remember when my my son started skiing, he was four years old. I I never wore a helmet, I grew up without helmets. but I started wearing a helmet just so he would see me wearing a helmet. and now I went ski without a helmet 'cause he's just you know, I'm just so used to it, it keeps me warm. But the the the the the the idea was that he was never gonna have the habit, no matter what I said, if I modeled something differently.

Natalie Tysdal (24:46)

Yeah. Yep, that's absolutely right.

mark (24:50)

so I I've got a million things, but I don't want to take up too much time, but you know.

feel free to get back to us with any questions.

Natalie Tysdal (24:59)

Yeah, well I'd

love to have a link. We'll put it in the show notes. people buy your product just on your website or are you distributing it at other places?

mark (25:07)

so right now it's all directed to consumer. and I'll give you a discount code if you want to put that in your in your in your

Natalie Tysdal (25:11)

great. Yeah.

mark (25:13)

show notes.

Natalie Tysdal (25:13)

You bet. you could just give that to me and I'll put it in the notes for everybody.

mark (25:18)

Yep.

Natalie Tysdal (25:19)

Super. Well, Mark, thanks so much for taking the time. I'm excited

mark (25:22)

Right.

Natalie Tysdal (25:22)

to to try your product. I'm always looking at at new things and wanting what's best for health, number one, for safety, all of that. And I I love being able to tell people about products that do that. So thank you.

mark (25:34)

Right. All right. Thank you, Natalie.