Practising in Egypt has taught me things about sun and skin that no textbook in St. Petersburg quite prepared me for. Here the UV index sits at eight to eleven for most of the year — levels northern Europe sees only on rare midsummer days. The sea reflects light back at you, sand does the same, and the dry heat means you rarely feel yourself burning until it has already happened. Under these conditions, vague advice fails fast. What follows is what actually survives contact with reality.
Protection that holds up at UV index 10
Choose a broad-spectrum SPF 50 — broad-spectrum matters because UVA, the ageing wavelength, penetrates deep into the dermis and degrades collagen even when nothing turns red. Then apply enough of it: most people use a quarter to half the studied amount, quietly turning their SPF 50 into an SPF 15. For the face and neck, the two-finger rule — two full strips of product along the index and middle fingers — is a habit worth building.
Reapplication is where good intentions die. Every two hours outdoors, and immediately after swimming or towelling, regardless of what the label promises about water resistance. Between eleven and three, shade and fabric outperform any cream: a wide hat and UV-protective sunglasses are skincare. And a note I repeat often here: deeper phototypes burn less but still photoage and pigment — melanin is a parasol, not armour. In fact, post-inflammatory pigmentation is often more stubborn in olive and darker skin, which makes prevention even more valuable.
Repair, for the evenings you got it wrong
Even careful people misjudge a day. If skin is hot and pink, begin with a cool — not icy — shower, then a generous layer of simple moisturiser on damp skin; this is the moment for panthenol or aloe-based formulas, not for acids, retinoids or fragranced products. Drink water; a burn dehydrates the whole body. Whatever you do, do not exfoliate peeling skin — those flakes are a wound dressing your body made itself, and pulling them off invites pigmentation. Sunburned skin needs roughly a week of deliberate blandness, and the kindest thing you can put on it the morning after is shade.
For everyone living under this sun, burned or not, I recommend an antioxidant serum — vitamin C is the best studied — under morning sunscreen. Antioxidants neutralise part of the free-radical damage that UV generates even through diligent SPF; think of them as the second line of defence behind the wall.
Timing treatments around the sun
This is where my Egyptian practice differs most from a northern one. Peels, microneedling and any procedure that renews the surface make skin temporarily more vulnerable to UV — fresh skin pigments easily. In Russia, we simply scheduled courses for winter. Here there is no winter to hide in, so the rules change: I favour gentler protocols such as mandelic peels, which are among the most sun-tolerant; I plan courses in the lower-UV months from November to February where possible; and I am strict — genuinely strict — about SPF 50 and hats during any course, in every season. Hydrating and soothing treatments, lymphatic massage and barrier repair, on the other hand, belong to summer beautifully.
None of this is a reason to fear the sun that makes life here so generous. It is a reason to respect it the way sailors respect the sea — with habits, not heroics. If pigmentation has already settled in and bothers you, it is one of the most individual problems in aesthetics, and worth assessing in person rather than treating by guesswork.