What is the best and most immediate treatment for sunburn?

Now that the hot weather is around the corner, sun tanning is on everyone’s mind. Each year thousands of individuals develop sunburn from excessive sun exposure and no matter how much preventive advice is given, it usually goes unheeded.

Sunburn varies in degree. Mild cases are no big deal but most individuals develop moderate to severe degree sunburn. Once sunburn has occurred, there is no magical treatment to reverse the process. Sunburn skin becomes maximal 12-24 hours after exposure, but the treatment takes a lot longer to reverse.

There are methods to relieve pain and help healing of skin with simple home made remedies:

The first thing to do when you realize you have sunburn, is to get out of the sun.

Use a cold compress. This can be a moist towel, ice pack or a a nice cool bath. Cold compresses only help when applied soon after the burn. When cold therapy is taken soon after sunburn, swelling, pain and redness is generally much less.

Sunburn always dries up skin. Thus, it is very important to keep the skin moist. One may use any number of moisturizers. Aloe Vera is probably as good as any. If there is excessive peeling of skin and itching, one can also apply hydrocortisone. Hydrocortisone is available over the counter and will rapidly relieve both itching and dryness in no time.

Sunburn may look painful but the pain in most cases is mild to moderate. Over the counter pain pills like Motrin or Advil can help relieve the ache and redness