Sunburns are one of the harsh realities of summer. If you’re a paler person, and you don’t spend long periods of time in the sun regularly, chances are that you are surprised by a sunburn once or twice a year. Sunburns often happen during vacations - times when we want more than anything to be free of pain and suffering. If you earned yourself a burn in the summer sun, here are some ways to alleviate the hurt. 

The Day Of 

It’s important to treat your skin as soon as you get a sunburn. Following sun exposure, your skin may take as little as 30 minutes to turn red, or as long as 2 to 6 hours. At this point, the damage is done, but there are things you can do to minimize your upcoming suffering. 

Start by hydrating your skin, from the inside and out. Drink lots of water, and avoid dehydrating drinks containing caffeine and alcohol. Try to double your normal water intake. Your skin has been damaged by the sun and needs to recover its fluids. Topical treatments like Vaseline jelly form a moisture barrier atop your skin, to prevent further dehydration. Of course, there are more wholesome salves for your skin, but we’ll get to those in the next section. 

The Next Day

The redness of your sunburn will peak at about the 24-hour mark. At this point, you’ll look like a boiled lobster, and the mild prickle that you felt last night will start to feel noticeably painful. It’s here that your skin really starts to experience the damage it incurred the previous day. 

At this point, salves like aloe vera can really help. If you have a particularly painful sunburn, choose aloe vera ointment with lidocaine. This topical anesthetic will temporarily alleviate your sunburn pain when it’s at its worst. Other ointments, such as coconut oil, contain high levels of saturated fats, which your skin will absolutely love. You may find that your skin, on this day, is more absorbent than normal. This is because your skin is hurt, and needs to soak up every beneficial nutrient it can find. 

Using coconut oil and aloe vera as a base, you can add many nutritious ingredients to a homemade sunburn salve. Lavender, eucalyptus, and chamomile essential oils can cool hot and soothe painful skin. Oils like these are also strongly antimicrobial, thus helping to prevent infection or secondary inflammation of sun-damaged skin. Vitamin E can help restore skin more quickly than would be possible without it. 

In addition to topical treatments, make sure to eat nutritious foods in the day following a sunburn. Keep drinking lots of water and continue avoiding dehydrating beverages.

Day 3-20

Depending on the severity of your burn, sunburn discomfort will likely be most acute on the second or third day. During this period, just keep using all the techniques we’ve described so far (and, of course, stay out of the sun!).

As your burn heals, the damaged upper layer of skin will die and be sloughed off. This is the “peeling” stage, and while nobody likes the Freddy Krueger look, it does mean that your skin is healing. If your burn is no longer red and painful, you may start applying your favorite skin lotion to the affected area at this stage. This will help reduce the appearance of flaking, speed up the peeling process, and heal the new layer of skin beneath the old burn. 

Nobody likes a sunburn, and this affliction can be quite the speedbump on a summer holiday. However, with proper treatment in the hours and days following a burn, you’ll be able to minimize suffering and speed up recovery.