What to do against sunburn

The most important points in brief

• Anyone who has got a sunburn wants to know what works against it - and not hear that one should have been more careful.
• On this page we introduce you to some methods of soothing irritated and reddened skin.
• If you are sunburned, it is important to start using it straight away.
• But beware of the wrong, unreliable home remedies - with these you usually only make the consequences of sunburn worse.

They have to bring cooling quickly and accelerate healing quickly - remedies for sunburn. But because a not inconsiderable part of humanity consists of know-it-alls, the first thing you often have to do is to hear why you weren't careful and how dangerous a sunburn is. Yes - you know! Hardly anyone has really wise advice on what to do about the injury instead.

Sunburn - you should stay away from this remedy

Well-intentioned tips often have one bad quality: they are only meant well, but are by no means good. It is exactly the same with tips for sunburn. Many swear by the juice of carrots, and the beta-carotene it contains actually helps protect the skin. However, the effect is far too small to really do anything against the already existing sunburn.

Lemon juice and apple cider vinegar are also popular tips. These may have a cooling effect in the short term, but the medium-term effect is fatal, as they irritate the skin more and thus prevent it from calming down. Cool packs and ice cubes? Not a good idea either. The enormous cold also damages the already battered skin and makes the irritation significantly worse. You can also get frostbite.

Good home remedies for sunburn

After a normal sunbath there is a good selection of after sun products. But what really helps when the sun has literally burned your skin? For example, coconut oil is very good for two reasons. On the one hand, the care characteristics of coconut oil with regard to the skin are very good, on the other hand, this substance also has an antibacterial effect that supports the healing process well.

A plant of the genus Aloe Vera at home not only looks good - the juice of this plant also helps with sunburn. To do this, the leaves are cut lengthways and the viscous side of the leaf is placed on the burned skin. Admittedly, you don't always have coconut oil and aloe vera at home (although gel or ointment with aloe vera also work, of course). Therefore two home remedies that you often have in stock or that you can get very quickly.

Black tea and quark help with sunburn

You read that correctly: Cool compresses soaked in cold black tea are an effective remedy for extensive sunburn, as the tannins and antioxidants soothe the skin and reduce the risk of peeling. If the sunburn only occurs in individual places, then simply place the (cooled) tea bags on top.

Last but not least: quark. As with tea, make cooling compresses and place them on the sunburn to cool. A quarter of an hour is enough because the quark then contracts and stimulates blood circulation. However, if the sunburn has blistered the skin, curd cheese is a bad idea, as the lactic acid bacteria in the curd can penetrate the body through the bubbles and cause infections and inflammation there.