Ten Tips to a Healthy Tan

You don't have to be tanning yourself in the Caribbean to need help with summer sun…. just going to the grocery store, or walking to lunch can expose your skin to damaging ultraviolet rays. And with a million cases of skin cancer diagnosed each year

Someone dies of skin cancer-malignant skin cancer every hour—about one every 67 minutes.

Let's face it. You need to be protected every day AND you want that sun-kissed look for your skin. Here's our top ten tips to both: Choose a sunscreen with an SPF of 15 or higher to limit the harmful UVB rays—the ones that burn you and cause most skin cancers.

Five or more sunburns and you double your risk of skin cancer…

There's also UVA rays which age and wrinkle, as well as cause some skin cancers. Choose a broad spectrum sunscreen with Parsol 1789, zinc oxide, or titanium dioxide and watch the expiration date.

If the sunscreen has been exposed to heat I would replace it every year.

Are you applying enough sunscreen to get the protection promised on the bottle? It's a full ounce..that's a shotglass full! Use sunscreen every day, even if you're not planning to be exposed. Research shows that those who get into the daily routine have significantly fewer skin cancers.

Now sunscreen in your makeup base is not as good as if you put it on as a moisturizer under the base.

Reapply sunscreen each and every time you get wet. But dry off first, water dilutes sunscreen. And don't forget to reapply every two hours even if you're sunning..more often if you're sweating. But what about waterproof sunscreens?

If it says waterproof and you've been in the water for 80 minutes, you need to get out and reapply it.

Hats are key. Choose one with a 2-3 inch brim. Protective clothing is great—but be careful, if you can see through the fabric, so can the sun. And reduce your risk of cataracts, macular degeneration and eyelid skin cancer by wearing sunglasses.

Look for neutral gray or amber brown lenses on sunglasses, make sure they are wraparound sunglasses and be sure they say 100% uv protection as a sticker on the sunglasses.

See this map of UV rays the EPA puts out each day? Tanning beds put out the same UV real rays, so you're asking for trouble. And don't pop any tanning pills or tanning accelerators…

The tanning pills give you more of an orange look and there was a scare on the tanning pills causing internal damage a while back so its not really the best way to go.

We promised you a HEALTHY tan, remember? Well, the reality is that any tan is a form of skin damage. So protect yourself as we've described, and get your sun-kissed look from a bottle.

You can have fun in the sun and still be sun smart—

For WebMD, I'm Sandee LaMotte.