Student Travel Health

Treating a Sunburn
-- By Chris Ott
© 2000, RPK&A, Inc.

I went to Costa Rica for high-minded things: the rainforest, the culture, the language. But I wasn't completely insensible to the call of the beach. After all, I was only in the country for a couple of weeks, and back on campus it was one of those cold, wet winters that leaves people begging for mercy.

But whether I was out on the sand for longer than I thought--15 or 20 minutes sans sunscreen couldn't be so bad, could it?--or whether it was the angle of the almost-equatorial sun, I misjudged something. The waitress in the tiny restaurant where I stopped for an early dinner on the way home from the beach looked worried, and by the time I got back to my room at the pensión, I could see why. I had turned hot pink. My skin burned so bad it gave me weird, feverish chills. When the peeling started about a week later, my skin was sloughing off in such big flakes it looked like I had feathers. The best way to deal with a sunburn is, duh, not to get one in the first place. But if you make a mistake, or end up stuck in the sun longer than expected, there are some things you can do:

• Cool it. A cool shower or bath, or the application of towels soaked in cool water, can minimize damage to sunburned skin and make you more comfortable. So can some over-the-counter lotions and anesthetic sprays for sunburns. Ordinary over-the-counter medicines that reduce pain and inflammation, such as aspirin or ibuprofen, can help, too.
  
  Remember that cool can be better than cold. Except for small burns, putting ice on a burn can be harsh and uncomfortable.
  
  
• Protect the burn from more damage. Sun protection factor (SPF) 15 sunscreen--or, better yet, clothes--keeps the sun from wreaking more havoc on skin that has already been burned.
  
  
• Most sunburns are first-degree burns: damage to the top layer of skin. These burns are painful but usually don't require medical attention. For a second-degree burn, however--a burn that blisters--the damage is deeper. You can still treat a small second-degree burn yourself by cooling and protecting it, but check with a health care provider about a blistering sunburn to a large area of your body.
  
  
• If you have blisters, don't break them open. Sometimes they open up by themselves, but it's a bad idea to open them up before their time because they can get infected. And if you've got blisters on an area that's likely to get rubbed and irritated a lot by your clothes, you might also want to cover the blisters with a padded bandage.