A combination of long clothes, wide brimmed or legionnaires hats, sun glasses, sunscreen, staying in the shade and where possible completely avoiding the sun between 11am and 3 pm.

Even in the shade you are still catching about 50% UV exposure.

Sand, snow and water will reflect extra UV light

Hats, shade cloth and tinted windows only offer partial protection.

You need many layers of protection (e.g. hat, sunglasses AND sunscreen) against the Australian Sun.

SPF 50 sun screen if used correctly stops 98% of harmful UV rays from damaging the skin. Unfortunately, nobody (myself included) puts on enough sunscreen for it to perform as advertised by the manufacturers. Wearing sunscreen has shown to give people a false sense of security and they spend longer in the Sun with adequate coverage sometimes leading to MORE sun damage. You need a THICK layer of sunscreen an addition to the above UV minimization strategies to be safe in the Sun.

Once sun damaged has accumulated the skin can get rough "solar keratosis", each of which can develop into a skin cancer. By removing this sun damage we can reduce the risk of skin cancers growing as well as the added bonus of making the skin appear more youthful.

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Options for treating solar keratosis

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Vitamin B3 tablets ~25% reduction, stops working as soon as you take it

Cryotherapy ~70% clearance of each lesion frozen. The harsher the freeze the more effective, but also more painful and higher risk of scar.

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FIELD TREATMENTS - there are a few main options with more being added each year.

Field treatments are generally quite effective, can treat a large area and treat small pre-cancerous lesions which are to small to be seen/felt on examination.

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Efudix - 80-90% effective, treatment lasts typically 2-4 weeks with a further healing time of 1-2 months. Is known for being quite harsh but effective.

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Photo-dynamic therapy - 80-?90% effective - treatment is completed in a single day, however requires a few steps and often people will prefer to stay in the clinic for the ~4 hrs it takes to complete. Healing takes 5-7 days.

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EFUCAL - 80-90% effective -relatively new protocol using a combination of efudix and calcipritriol. Quicker and not as harsh as efudix.