Do dead skin cells help protect against the sun?

Skin may even become thickened and leathery, wrinkled, or thinned like tissue paper. “The more sun exposure you have, the earlier your skin ages,” says Dr. Barnett S. Kramer, a cancer prevention expert at NIH. Your skin does have ways to prevent or repair such damage. The outermost layer of skin constantly sheds dead skin cells and replaces them. read more

Protection starts with the natural layer of oil that appears on the outermost surface of the skin, providing the first barrier of protection. The stratum corneum also protects against the invasion of foreign substances. read more