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Sun Sensitivity And Menopause: Protecting Your Changing Skin

Sun Sensitivity And Menopause: Protecting Your Changing Skin
Everyone talks about hot flashes and mood swings during menopause, but there’s a sneakier change that often gets overlookedβ€”sun sensitivity. It can feel like your skin’s suddenly more prone to burning or developing dark spots, and no, you’re not imagining things!
During menopause, your skin can become much more sensitive to sunlight. But with the proper knowledge and tools, you can safeguard your skin and maintain its health even into your later years.
01

The Science Behind Menopause and Sun Sensitivity

Hormone changes impact more than just your mood and temperature regulation; they significantly affect skin health and sun sensitivity. The decline in estrogen and progesterone can reduce the skin's ability to protect itself from UV damage, making it more vulnerable to sunburn and photoaging. Understanding how these hormones influence your skin is essential for managing sun sensitivity during menopause.

Estrogen and Progesterone's Role in Skin Health

Estrogen and progesterone are vital hormones influencing almost every aspect of your skin’s health, including:
  • Promoting Collagen Production: Estrogen helps signal fibroblasts to produce collagen, making it an integral part of collagen biosynthesis and essential to maintaining skin elasticity and firmness.[1]
  • Maintaining Skin Hydration: Estrogen helps keep the skin hydrated by regulating the production of natural oils.[1]
  • Regulating Melanin: Estrogen and progesterone help regulate melanin, the pigment responsible for skin tone. A disruption of these hormones can contribute to hyperpigmentation like melasma, although the direct cause is not well understood.[1]
  • Exhibiting Anti-Inflammatory Effect: Because of its anti-inflammatory properties, estrogen is vital to your skin's ability to fight skin inflammation.[2]
With the decline of estrogen during menopause, these protective mechanisms weaken, making the skin more susceptible to UV damage.[1,2]
Though often overshadowed by estrogen, progesterone also plays a key role in skin health. This hormone helps with skin elasticity, wound healing, and maintaining a healthy balance of oil production. As progesterone levels decline during menopause, your skin may become drier and more prone to inflammation, increasing its vulnerability to sunburn and photoaging.[3]

Thinning Skin: A Vulnerable Barrier

With the loss of estrogen and progesterone, menopausal skin experiences a significant reduction in collagen production. Women can lose up to 30% of their skin collagen in the first five years of menopause alone and 2% every year for 20 years after.[4] This rapid loss of collagen causes the skin to thin by about 1.1% per year, which is rather significant.[4]

Heightened UV Sensitivity: What’s Really Happening?

The combination of thinner skin and hormone-driven changes makes menopausal skin especially sensitive to UV radiation. UVB radiation, the radiation responsible for sunburns, can penetrate through the skin into the dermis much easier in thinner skin. This means that even minimal sun exposure can lead to an exaggerated inflammatory response, resulting in redness, hyperpigmentation, and increased risk of long-term skin damage.[2]
The skin cells responsible for producing new skin, keratinocytes, also become less efficient during menopause. This slowed cell turnover makes it harder for the skin to repair itself after sun damage. Studies have shown that menopausal women are more prone to photoagingβ€”sun-induced wrinkles, loss of elasticity, and pigmentation.[3]
02

Recognizing Increased Sun Sensitivity

During menopause, increased sun sensitivity can manifest in several ways, impacting your skin's health and appearance:
  • Sunburn: Post-menopausal skin with sun sensitivity will burn much quicker with more intense sunburns. At the same time, the skin’s repair mechanisms can slow down and take longer to heal.
  • Inflammation: Many women notice their skin becoming more prone to redness, rosacea, and other forms of inflammation post-menopause. This is because the skin’s inflammatory response is heightened and can become exacerbated by even minor sun exposure.[3]
  • Hyperpigmentation: Estrogen and progesterone are a part of your body's ability to naturally regulate melanin production. Since menopause disrupts the body's natural balance of these hormones, sun exposure can lead to uneven skin tone and dark spots.[5]
  • Rapid Skin Aging: Since collagen and elastin levels are already diminished during menopause, the skin becomes much more prone to pronounced signs of photoaging caused by UV radiation.[4]
03

Strategies for Managing Sun Sensitivity During Menopause

Just because you have sun sensitivity doesn't mean you have to avoid the sun. Here are some of the most effective strategies to help you manage your sun sensitivity:

Sun Protection

Sunscreen is one of the best ways to protect sun-sensitive skin from the damage UV radiation can cause. Using a broad-spectrum sunscreen with an SPF of at least 30+ provides both UVA and UVB protection.
Zinc oxide, the active UV filter ingredient in OneSkin’s OS-01 BODY SPF and OS-01 FACE SPF, provides excellent broad-spectrum protection and is safe for sensitive skin. Packed with the senescent-blocking OS-01 peptide and antioxidants, OS-01 BODY SPF and OS-01 FACE SPF help your skin repair the effects of aging.[6,7]
Applying sunscreen dailyβ€”even on cloudy daysβ€”and reapplying every two hours is crucial for optimal protection. When used with UV-protective clothing and avoiding peak UV hours, you can still enjoy the outdoors without fearing harsh sunburns.

Antioxidant-Rich Skincare: Shielding from Within

Antioxidants are critical in protecting the skin from free radicals, unstable molecules generated by UV radiation. When topically applied, antioxidants neutralize the free radicals caused by sun exposure and intrinsic aging.
Antioxidants like vitamin C, vitamin E, sulforaphane, and niacinamide can reduce inflammation, repair sun-damaged skin, and even help prevent the onset of hyperpigmentation like melasma.[8,9]

OS-01 Improves Epidermal Thickness

Thinning skin is one of the most significant contributors to heightened UV sensitivity during menopause. To combat this, our topical supplements, OS-01 FACE, and OS-01 BODY, are scientifically proven to improve epidermal thickness.[7, 10] This is likely due to the OS-01 peptide, which is also scientifically proven to increase epidermal thickness, promote cell proliferation, and support skin’s natural collagen production, helping your skin grow back thicker and stronger than before.[7, 10]
Shown in lab studies on human skin samples by measuring epidermal thickness of histology images. Skin treated with the OS-01 peptide displayed a significant increase compared to skin with no treatment. (Zonari, A., et al. npj Aging, 2023) Increase of +28% was measured on human skin sample from a 55 year old donor treated with the OS-01 peptide. Data was measured in triplicate. Note: In npj Aging publication,"Pep 14" = OS-01 peptide

Β 

By reinforcing the skin's natural barrier, this enhancement may help reduce sun sensitivity associated with menopause, offering better protection against harmful UV rays.

OS-01 Reduces Biomarkers of Inflammation

As your skin gets thinner, the inflammation caused by UV damage can become a significant source of skin aging and discomfort. By supporting the skin's natural repair mechanisms and targeting a root cause of skin aging, the OS-01 peptide lowers the level of a key inflammation-associated biomarker, IL-6, in skin[8, 11] In fact, after 12 weeks of using OS-01 BODY, participants experienced lower levels of circulating cytokine, IL-8, in their blood compared to baseline, demonstrating the intricate link between skin health and whole-body inflammation. [7]

OS-01 Can Reduce the Effects of UV Damage

UV damage can speed up the accumulation of senescent cells within your skin, increasing inflammation and making it harder for your skin to repair itself. During menopause, your skin becomes much more susceptible to this damage, accelerating skin aging.
Luckily, our OS-01 peptide helps reduce and prevent UV-induced cellular senescence in the skin.Β 
Shown in lab studies on human skin cells by measuring the number of senescent cells via SA-Bgal staining before and after UVB exposure. Skin that was treated with the OS-01 peptide displayed a significant decrease (42.5% less UV-induced senescent cells) compared to skin that was not treated. (Zonari, A., et al. npj Aging, 2023) Note: In npj Aging publication,"Pep 14" = OS-01 peptide
By improving these key skin health metrics, OneSkin’s topical supplements address the underlying causes of menopausal sun sensitivity, giving you the power to keep your skin looking and feeling its best, no matter what menopause throws your wayβ€”and beyond.Β 
Key Takeaways:
  • During menopause, the decline in estrogen and progesterone can reduce the skin's ability to protect itself from UV damage, making it more vulnerable to sunburn and photoaging.
  • Menopausal women may experience quicker and more intense sunburns, with longer healing times due to slowed skin repair mechanisms.
  • Increased sun sensitivity during menopause can lead to redness, rosacea, rashes, and hives, particularly in sensitive areas like the face, neck, and hands.
  • UV radiation accelerates the breakdown of collagen and elastin, leading to rapid skin aging and pronounced signs of photoaging in menopausal women.
  • Effective sun protection includes using broad-spectrum sunscreen, wearing protective clothing, timing outdoor activities to avoid peak UV hours, and incorporating antioxidant-rich skincare to neutralize free radicals.

Last Updated April 23, 2025

Reviewed by

Alessandra Zonari

Alessandra Zonari

PhD, Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) and Co-Founder of OneSkin

Alessandra earned her Master’s degree in stem cell biology, and her PhD in skin regeneration and tissue engineering at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil in collaboration with the 3B’s Research Group in Portugal. Alessandra did a second post-doctoral at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. She is a co-inventor of three patents and has published 20 peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals.