Does Using Vitamin C Boost Your Sunscreen?

All of the experts interviewed gave a resounding "yes" that vitamin C can boost the power of sunscreen. "Vitamin C is one of our best known and most powerful antioxidants that helps repair free radicals created from sun and environmental damage," says Dr. Naissan O. Wesley, board-certified dermatologist. "Since sunscreen is helping us prevent UV damage, in helping repair UV-induced damage, vitamin C is helping our sunscreen and sun protection work better."

Pairing sunscreen and vitamin C is a double win because the combo can help repair and reverse sun damage at the same time it's working to protect. This is extremely important because Wesley says that the more cumulative UV damage that occurs to skin over our lifetimes, the more difficult it is to reverse.

Founder of Protocol Tyler Gaul cites a clinical study that shows 10 percent ascorbic acid (vitamin C) topically applied under sunscreen has been found to reduce the occurrence of sun damage by between 40 and 60 percent. "This is because ascorbic acid combats free radicals (mainly unstable oxygen atoms) produced by UV exposure," says Gaul.

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