What You Can Do to Prevent Skin Cancer

May is officially Skin Cancer Awareness Month, so it’s a perfect time to think about your skin health. As daylight gets longer and summer plans heat up, you might be spending more time outdoors. As you do, it’s important to protect your skin.

The sun’s ultraviolet (UV) rays take a toll on your skin health. They don’t just cause premature aging. They also damage skin cells, potentially causing mutation that turns into cancer. Fortunately, skin cancer is preventable. 

Here at Elevation Dermatology in Lakewood, Colorado, Kim Neyman, MD, Nazanin Kalani Williams, MD, FAAD, and our team want to help you defend against skin cancer this summer and beyond. For that, we recommend taking two specific courses of action.  

Sun protection: Your first line of defense

First things first, do what you can to keep UV rays off your skin. When possible, that means staying in the shade or choosing clothing and accessories that protect you. A lightweight, long-sleeved shirt and a wide-brimmed hat do a lot to prevent harmful UV light from reaching your skin cells.

When you can’t cover up, get serious about sunscreen. There are a few best practices you should apply here:

• Choose a broad-spectrum sunscreen that offers UVA and UVB protection
• Use an option with a sun protection factor (SPF) of at least 30
• Choose a higher SPF sunscreen if you’re going to be outside for a long time
• Apply the sunscreen a half hour before you go outside
• Reapply every two hours
• Use enough; most people need about two tablespoons for their whole body

If you’ve had trouble finding a good sunscreen, ask our team. We can help you pinpoint an option that fits your needs and your budget. 

Stage 2: Regular skin checks

While you can prevent harmful UV rays from reaching you now, your skin probably got some sun through the years. Regular skin checks help you watch for signs that your skin cells are growing abnormally. 

Once a month, perform a thorough self-exam. Look for:

• Spots that are changing (e.g., getting bigger or darker)
• Scaly or crusty spots
• Pearly bumps
• Spots that itch or bleed and don’t heal with time
• Spots that don’t look like your other moles (e.g., have irregular borders, are darker)

Essentially, look for anything on your skin that doesn’t look normal or any spots you notice changing from month to month. If you see something, make an appointment with us.

To get professional support in catching skin cancer early — when treatment is typically highly successful — you can directly tap us in, too. With annual skin cancer screenings, our medical dermatology team can watch for problematic areas. 

Whether you find a potentially problematic spot or we do, we offer a wide variety of treatment options. If you catch skin cancer before it can spread, it’s usually highly curable. 

Skin Cancer Awareness Month is the perfect time to schedule an appointment with our team of skin cancer specialists. To do that, call our office today.