Don’t Get Burned by Drinkable Sunscreen

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Could sun protection be just a sip away?

A Colorado company says it has created a drinkable sunscreen that neutralizes UV radiation, protecting your skin from the sun’s harmful rays.

A 100-milliliter bottle of Osmosis Skin Harmonized Water for sun exposure sells for $30. Its ingredient list is short and sweet: distilled water and “multiple vibrational frequency blends.”

So how does ingestible sunscreen work? According to the Denver Business Journal, Dr. Ben Johnson, founder of Osmosis Skincare and Harmonized H2O, said all you need to do is drink 2 millilters of the water an hour before going in the sun and you’ll be protected from the sun’s harmful UV rays for about three hours.

He said the product is made by manipulating radio waves that naturally occur in water to give them UV-canceling properties, then duplicating that process hundreds of thousands of times, and bottling that water up.

Once people drink the solution, he said, it shares those solar-ray-canceling characteristics with the water already in their body and repels sunlight at the skin level.

“They neutralize the sun before it hits you,” Johnson said. “So we are radiating sun-protecting waves at a 97 percent level.”

If you think neutralizing UVA and UVB rays with vibrational frequencies sounds a little farfetched, join the club. The water is not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, nor does it have independent scientific evidence to back up the product’s claims.

The American Academy of Dermatology released this statement about the so-called sunscreen:

This drink should not be used as a replacement for sunscreen or sun-protective clothing. There is currently no scientific evidence that this “drinkable sunscreen” product provides any protection from the sun’s damaging UV rays.

That was a nice response. Some dermatologists didn’t hold anything back. According to a WebMD blog:

“It’s ridiculous,” says David J. Leffell, MD, the David Paige Smith Professor of Dermatology & Surgery at Yale School of Medicine. “It’s scientific jibberish. Unless they are willing to present scientific, peer-reviewed data to support these claims, we have no choice but to dismiss it.”

If you really want to protect yourself from the sun, take your $30 and buy a bottle of SPF 30 and a wide-brimmed sun hat. You’ll probably have money left over to buy a cold drink and a new beach towel. At least you know that SPF lotions and head coverings provide sun protection that’s been tested and approved. Click here for a list of Consumer Reports’ recommended sunscreens.

What do you think about drinkable sunscreen? Share your thoughts below or on our Facebook page.

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