Allergic to Sunscreen

As I've mentioned before, I have VERY sensitive skin. On a few occasions, my my face has turned into a flaming tomato because I wanted to try out a new beauty product. Recently, I ran into another skin problem and thought I'd blog about it in case anyone has the same problem. I've been using Olay Complete Sensitive Skin with SPF as my day moisturizer for a while now. I had run out and went to the drugstore to pick up a new bottle. Little did I know that they recently changed their formula. I'm allergic to common active ingredients found in sunscreen, such as oxybenzone and avobenzone. It's especially hard for me to find moisturizers I could use as I'd prefer one with SPF 15. Olay's new formula included avobenzone, which it did not in the past. I didn't bother to do a double-check of it's ingredients since I used this product before. Unfortunately for me, I woke up the next day with red, flaky, and irritated skin. It's been a few days and though my skin is still a bit red and dry, it's much better. Being allergic to sunscreen is a form of "contact dermatitis"- or basically your skin being allergic to an irritant. Through research and dermatologist consultations, I found that the best sunscreens for me use zinc oxide or titanium dioxide. For days to the beach, I use Neutrogena's Sensitive Skin Sunblock lotion, which uses these ingredients. Now that Olay retooled their formula, I had to find a new everyday face lotion. So far, I've found a lotion from Eucerin and a CVS brand lotion that I could use. I haven't tried it yet but hopefully it'll work out. If you are interested in learning more about sunscreens and contact dermatitis, read this article on About: Sunscreen Allergy. It's been really helpful for me in learning about my skin condition.

Hope this helped someone out there! Have a great weekend everyone!