Should you wear sunscreen when it's cloudy in S.F.? Here's what experts say
That's a reasonable question in San Francisco, especially given that it's the city's coldest, foggiest summer in recent memory.
But experts say there's no ambiguity: You still need to wear sunscreen. Weather — even our eternal fog — should not play a role in your decision.
'There's a significant or clinically meaningful amount (of skin-damaging radiation coming through), even if it is foggy,' said Dr. Sungat Grewal, co-director of laser surgery and cosmetic dermatology at UCSF.
On foggier days, clouds scatter and absorb a portion of ultraviolet radiation from the sun, but a lot still gets to the ground — especially UVA rays (which primarily cause skin aging), and to a lesser extent UVB rays (which primarily cause sunburn). Both types can lead to cancer.
Up to 80 to 90 percent of UV rays can penetrate fog and clouds, according to Dr. Estelle Kahn, a dermatologist at Kaiser Permanente.
All UV radiation contributes to your risk of getting skin cancer, and the damage is cumulative — meaning the problem is not just one day, but rather total exposure throughout your lifetime.
Grewal recommends wearing tinted, broad-spectrum sunscreen with an SPF of 30 or higher, every day. 'Broad spectrum' protects against both types of ultraviolet light, whereas SPF mainly refers to UVB protection. The tinted element is more for cosmetic purposes — fighting aging — but still important to consider, both Grewal and Kahn said. Tinted sunscreen blocks visible light, which leads to pigmentation and other skin appearance issues.
'The best sunscreen is the one that you like … and are going to want to use every day,' Grewal said.
The UV index, found at weather.com, the Environmental Protection Agency's SunWise UV Index app or your preferred weather app, shows considerable variation during the day in San Francisco. On Friday in San Francisco, for example, the index — which runs on a scale of 1 to 11 — showed 2 until around 9:30 a.m., but then soared to 10 around 1 p.m.
While you can forgo sunscreen if the index is at 1 or 2, indices of 3 and upward warrant sun protection, according to the EPA — and a 1 or 2 can very quickly become a higher number, with 8 or more considered 'very high to extreme.' The National Weather Service calculates the UV index using both UVA and UVB rays.
Winter months have a lower UV index. But Kahn said you still need to wear sunscreen then. She reiterated that UV radiation is invisible and doesn't correlate with temperature.
Chronicle meteorologist Greg Porter's advice? 'Don't base your sunscreen choice on the cloud cover, certainly in this city.'
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San Francisco Chronicle
13 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Should you wear sunscreen when it's cloudy in S.F.? Here's what experts say
How much can the sun damage our skin if we can't even see it? That's a reasonable question in San Francisco, especially given that it's the city's coldest, foggiest summer in recent memory. But experts say there's no ambiguity: You still need to wear sunscreen. Weather — even our eternal fog — should not play a role in your decision. 'There's a significant or clinically meaningful amount (of skin-damaging radiation coming through), even if it is foggy,' said Dr. Sungat Grewal, co-director of laser surgery and cosmetic dermatology at UCSF. On foggier days, clouds scatter and absorb a portion of ultraviolet radiation from the sun, but a lot still gets to the ground — especially UVA rays (which primarily cause skin aging), and to a lesser extent UVB rays (which primarily cause sunburn). Both types can lead to cancer. Up to 80 to 90 percent of UV rays can penetrate fog and clouds, according to Dr. Estelle Kahn, a dermatologist at Kaiser Permanente. All UV radiation contributes to your risk of getting skin cancer, and the damage is cumulative — meaning the problem is not just one day, but rather total exposure throughout your lifetime. Grewal recommends wearing tinted, broad-spectrum sunscreen with an SPF of 30 or higher, every day. 'Broad spectrum' protects against both types of ultraviolet light, whereas SPF mainly refers to UVB protection. The tinted element is more for cosmetic purposes — fighting aging — but still important to consider, both Grewal and Kahn said. Tinted sunscreen blocks visible light, which leads to pigmentation and other skin appearance issues. 'The best sunscreen is the one that you like … and are going to want to use every day,' Grewal said. The UV index, found at the Environmental Protection Agency's SunWise UV Index app or your preferred weather app, shows considerable variation during the day in San Francisco. On Friday in San Francisco, for example, the index — which runs on a scale of 1 to 11 — showed 2 until around 9:30 a.m., but then soared to 10 around 1 p.m. While you can forgo sunscreen if the index is at 1 or 2, indices of 3 and upward warrant sun protection, according to the EPA — and a 1 or 2 can very quickly become a higher number, with 8 or more considered 'very high to extreme.' The National Weather Service calculates the UV index using both UVA and UVB rays. Winter months have a lower UV index. But Kahn said you still need to wear sunscreen then. She reiterated that UV radiation is invisible and doesn't correlate with temperature. Chronicle meteorologist Greg Porter's advice? 'Don't base your sunscreen choice on the cloud cover, certainly in this city.'
San Francisco Chronicle
13 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Best way to nurture kids' pro sports dreams? New study challenges a popular belief
For young athletes looking to go pro — and for parents motivated to help their children get there — is specializing in their sport early on the best path forward? New research out of UCSF suggests that narrative may be false. Dr. Nirav Pandya, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon and vice chair of orthopedics at UCSF, has found that the incentive behind specializing in sports lies largely in the lack of education on the topic. 'Most parents just want the best for their kids, so they're in this helicopter parenting age. They're like, 'The best way I can get my kid there is, make sure they have the best private coach and they're on the best team, and they're doing soccer 24/7,'' Pandya told the Chronicle. 'Parents want their kids to do well, so they go to club sports and specialize … but without knowing the data.' But Pandya's UCSF study suggests that professional athletes who played multiple sports in high school are not only achieving higher success in the pros, but are missing fewer games due to injury than their single-sport counterparts. The study focused on 10 years worth of NBA first-round draft picks. The results showed that NBA players who participated in multiple high school sports appeared in 19% more games, had a higher player efficiency rating and were twice as likely to win awards than their single-sport counterparts. Pandya said broader research conducted by him and UCSF also extended to other leagues — including NFL, NHL, MLB and many Olympic sports — and the findings were similar. But there's another misconception about intensive training that is often overlooked. 'The kids I've seen go professional, it's not because they specialize or they play multiple sports,' Pandya said. 'They were going to be professional athletes because they're just naturally gifted and have that skill, and they're lucky not to get injured.' Pandya became curious about the subject when he noticed a rise in young athletes coming into his office with serious sports injuries. He quickly identified a pattern in his patients: Many began to focus on only one sport early in their careers. And the age they were suffering injuries increasingly grew younger. Sue Phillips has also noticed these trends. Inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2024, Phillips has led the Mitty girls to multiple state and national high school championships over three decades. She has also coached several USA Basketball youth national teams to gold medals. 'The drawbacks of sport specialization for young athletes include a variety of issues: overuse injuries, emotional burnout, minimizing one's social circle and 'potentially' preventing the development of diversified motor/processing skills,' Phillips wrote in a text message. Phillips relates specialization at younger ages to a combination of factors. The current landscape of youth sports is intentionally designed for year-round competition — a departure from the days of playing one sport, and switching to another in the offseason. The youth sports industry has grown into an extremely profitable business, drawing in more than $40 billion annually, according to the Aspen Institute. Club sports play a heavy hand, serving as one of the most focused and intensive avenues for young athletes to train at the highest levels. 'In certain situations, when club sport directors/coaches and trainers rely on these avenues for their livelihood, there can be a narrative presented to their clients that 'more is more,'' Phillips wrote. 'When we all know that 'working smarter not harder' or 'less is more' proves to be in the best interest of the athlete.' UC Santa Cruz midfielder Alex Freeman considers herself a case of early specialization. Freeman began playing soccer at 4 years old, and while she had brief stints playing other sports recreationally, she knew early on that her goal of playing high-level soccer would require fully dedicating herself to it. Freeman played at Berkeley High School and with a competitive club that is now called Eastshore Alliance FC. While she had a positive experience, she knows many athletes who didn't share her delight while playing for other elite clubs. And at least, as she says, she was able to play both high school and club. 'I think for a lot of my friends, they felt they shouldn't do high school because they felt like it was a lower level,' Freeman said. 'You only have four years of high school, and to get (a scholarship) offer, most rosters are done by junior year. So there's no time to have three months of break. … So I think a lot of people felt pressure' to only play club soccer. In high school, Freeman tore her right and left ACLs on separate occasions — both the result of non-contact injuries while playing soccer. Her twin sister, Erin, who plays alongside Freeman at UC Santa Cruz, suffered identical ACL injuries at alarmingly similar times. But that experience wasn't uncommon. Freeman says at least one of her teammates tore an ACL every year. Her older sister, Leah, who also specialized in soccer early on, is also no stranger to injury. Freeman underwent hip surgery in December 2022 to repair a torn labrum. Leah played for the youth national team and is now a goalkeeper for Bay FC. For the Freeman family and by way of the kids' desire, soccer was year-round. But that's the case for most young athletes looking to go pro. There is no offseason — it's some combination of specialized training, high school, training camps and competitive clubs. And for many, the experience is exactly what it sounds like: ultra-competitive. 'Club is, again, not my club, but it gets super serious. You're playing in front of scouts like all the time. And it's hard to be friends with your teammates sometimes because there's so much competition between you guys, and like, it's so easy to burn out,' Alex Freeman said. 'For a lot of people who have been playing competitive for their whole lives, they kind of don't know who they are without it, and that's really scary.' When asked what advice they would give to parents motivated to help their children achieve their sports goals, Pandya, Phillips and Freeman's father all shared that the end goal should center around a child's happiness. 'Any decision that you make for your kid should be in support of what they want to do,' said Freeman's father, Dale. 'I think that a kid that's interested in athletics hopefully can get exposed to a lot of different sports, but whatever decision you make should be in support of your kid's interests, as opposed to some larger goal based on a parent's perception of what their kid is good at.'
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Bat flies into woman's mouth in Arizona, costing her nearly $21,000 in medical bills
A Massachusetts woman was bitten by nearly $21,000 in medical bills after a bat flew into her mouth during a freak incident while vacationing in Northern Arizona, the unlucky traveler said Friday. Erica Kahn, now 33, had recently lost her job as a biomedical engineer when she traveled to the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in last August, she told NBC News. Kahn, whose woman-vs.-animal story was first reported Thursday by KFF News, was snapping pictures of the night sky when a bat approached and got caught in between her camera and face. Then a part of the bat got into her mouth. "It was kind of dark out and we were out on a cliff, so I was looking down and at my camera, I didn't really see it coming," she said Friday. "When it got kind of tangled between my face and the camera, it was probably just like a few seconds. But it felt like a lot longer." While there are highly effective drugs for rabies, it can be fatal if not treated before symptoms are felt. At the urging of her travel partner and father, a doctor, the symptom-less Kahn sought care for rabies — but only after jumping online to buy new medical insurance. After Kahn lost her job, she declined to pay for her former employer's insurance for $650 a month through COBRA, the federal continuation of health coverage law. The unemployed Massachusetts woman figured she could roll the dice as a healthy woman in her early 30s or at worst, could hastily buy private health insurance in a pinch, Kahn said. Kahn went online, bought a policy and then went to get rabies vaccinations and treatment in Arizona, Colorado and Massachusetts, believing she was in the clear. Then the bills started pouring in, asking for a total of $20,749, because her policy had a 30-day waiting period before she could receive treatments covered by the plan, she said. "I felt so powerless against these companies," she said. "It should be a human right to have lifesaving care covered. In most other countries, like in Europe, you just go to the hospital, you get your rabies vaccines and you pay nothing." Sabrina Corlette, co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University, said most plans kick in on the first of the month after enrollment. It's generally not instantaneous. 'The insurance companies — for good reason — don't want people to wait to sign up for coverage until they are sick,' Corlette told KFF. Kahn is now employed again and has health insurance, she's burdened by the bills. Kahn said looking back, she should have secured private health insurance as soon as she was laid off. "I should have done COBRA, even though it was very expensive," Kahn said. "But yeah, hindsight is 20/20." The near-$21,000 burden will probably lead to fewer vacations and a delay in having central air conditioning installed at her place, Kahn said. She said she hopes others can learn from her misstep. "It was my fault. I took the risk of not doing COBRA and that's forever on me," she said. "But if one person gets covered because they saw this story, then I would be happy about that." This article was originally published on Solve the daily Crossword
