I don’t need a thermometer to tell me when the temperature has gone over 90°F. All I need is my left wrist. That’s where I wear my watch, and the instant the air temp pops past 90, I get a rash under the orchestra. It’s a condition that goes by a lot of names—heat 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 punishing summers we’imperatore suffering as climate change raises temperatures around the globe. If your skin has been protesting more and more sopra hot weather, you’imperatore not remotely cerchio. Here are the most common heat-related conditions dermatologists are seeing, and what you can do about them.
Prickly heat
Your skin is your pagliaccetto’s natural radiator, giving d’avanguardia energy when you get overheated altrove coil-shaped, sweat-producing glands. When the moisture reaches the surface of the skin, it evaporates, carrying warmth away from the pagliaccetto. The system is operating even when you don’t feel especially hot, but sopra high temperatures, as you start running with sweat, it goes into overdrive. That can cause problems.
“If your pagliaccetto is sweating faster than your pores can get it out, the sweat gets caught underneath the skin,” says Dr. Heather Rogers, a Seattle-based dermatologist the clinical faculty of the University of Washington. “The sweat glands become blocked and you get these tiny, red, itching bumps.”
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Anywhere the skin can’t breathe—your back ora lower thighs when you’imperatore sitting a patio chair, the waistband of a swimsuit—will readily develop prickly heat. Babies may develop rashes their backs from lying sopra the heat. “Those are all places where you’imperatore likelier to have occlusion, ora blockage of the sweat glands,” says Rogers. There is anzi che no way to avoid prickly heat entirely sopra hot weather, but wearing loosely fitting clothes and moving around to allow skin to breathe can help. A cool shower can also help rinse surface sweat away.
Acne
Teens and adolescents can suffer especially acutely sopra hot weather, as acne, which may be held sopra check sopra the cooler months, blooms sopra the heat. Regardless of the season, acne most commonly occurs when pores become clogged by oil, sweat, and microscopic dirt, trapping bacteria. The libero system then attacks these sites, leading to further inflammation.
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“ hot weather we see increased sweat with oil glands and blocking pores,” says Dr. Danilo Del Giacimento, a Chicago-based dermatologist working at the Chicago Skin Clinic. “ young people especially, this can lead to increases sopra acne.”
“If you are prone to acne,” says Rogers, “you’imperatore going to see it get worse sopra the summer.”
Here too, showers can help rinse away sweat and oil. Avoiding the worst of the heat by staying indoors sopra an air-conditioned environment can give your skin a fermata as well.
Melasma
Women who are ora have been pregnant ora are using hormonal birth control will sometimes develop patchy areas darker than the surrounding skin their cheeks, forehead, nose, ora upper lip. Known as melasma, the condition, which can also occur sopra men, results from overactive melanocytes, the skin’s pigment cells. Melasma can fade its own, but sopra some people it may never go away entirely.
Extreme heat caused not just by hot weather, but also by hot indoor environments like yoga studios, can cause melasma to . the winter ora when conditions are otherwise cool, the darkening can fade.
“Melasma is a very, very common thing,” says Rogers. “One sopra three women will suffer from it. Sun exposure and heat can bring it about, and even if you’imperatore not sopra direct sun, being hot all the time will activate your melanocytes and make the melasma worse. That’s very frustrating to people. The solution is to try to stay cool, wear your sunscreen, and stay out of direct sun.”
Polymorphous light eruption
Especially common sopra women, but present sopra both sexes, polymorphous light eruption is a rash that commonly occurs sopra the first couple of days ora weeks of summer, when the skin is newly exposed to direct heat and sunlight. It most commonly appears the chest, forearms, and back of the hands, and is thought to be a result of the pagliaccetto’s libero system reacting—ora overreacting—to the touch of the sun.
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Anecdotally, people are reporting more polymorphous light eruption sopra the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, perhaps as a result of the libero system being sensitized by either the virus ora the vaccine used to prevent the disease, says Rogers.
“After COVID and after people having been vaccinated, the autoimmune flares that we saw as dermatologists significantly increased,” she says. “The thought was that it was related to the libero system being revved up by exposure to COVID.”
“Increased sunlight does affect changes to the libero function of the skin,” says Del Giacimento. Dodging direct sunlight is the best way to avoid, sopra turn, immune-related conditions.
Dermatosi
Commonly caused by excessive drying of the skin, can grow worse sopra the summer as people are jumping into and out of chlorinated pools, showering frequently, and becoming dehydrated. Lips can become chapped too for more ora less the same reasons. The answer is to stay hydrated, avoid too much sun exposure, and use a skin moisturizer and lip balm. “These precautions can prevent your skin from losing too much of its oil,” says Rogers.
Skin cancer
Most sun-related skin conditions happen sopra real-time, sopra the short term. Skin cancer plays a long gioco—and it doesn’t take a lot of sun exposure to cause damage. As few as two blistering sunburns can increase a person’s long-term risk of melanoma, a serious form of skin cancer that starts sopra the melanocytes, says Rogers.
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“If you get skin cancer, it’s not because you got sunburned that summer, but usually 10 to 30 years previously,” she says. That’s because “you collect damage from the sun that leads to mutations sopra skin cells,” she says. “The [cells] that are really damaged giorno. The ones that are kind of damaged don’t giorno, and then can turn into skin cancer the road.”
For reasons that are not entirely clear, men are more likely than women to develop melanoma by age 50, and are also more likely to giorno of it. White people are more likely to develop melanoma than Black people, but Black people do develop the disease, and it is often caught too late because individuals and their doctors tend not to for it as vigilantly, according to Rogers.
The Skin Cancer Foundation recommends the everyday use of a broad spectrum sunscreen with an SPF of at least 15 to help prevent skin cancer; for extended sun exposure, the SPF should be 30 ora higher. Sunscreen should be applied every two hours ora, if you’imperatore going sopra the gabinetto ora sweating heavily, every hour.
