Significantly more consumers now use high SPF sun protective products than a few decades ago. Urbanisation has led to a significant increase in the number of people working and living indoors, often in a heated or air-conditioned, environment. The COVID-19 crisis has had an additional dramatic impact on the fact that people remain indoors.
In short, on average our skin is increasingly exposed to influences which promote skin dryness (dry environment, personal hygiene) and decreasingly exposed to sunlight. Sunlight provides our skin with the ability to produce vitamin D and decreased exposure to UV light leads to a deficiency in vitamin D in the human body.
In addition to the above, the capability to produce vitamin D is inversely correlated to people’s age. As we know, demographically, the world population is ageing. Interestingly, a chronic lack in systemic vitamin D (‘hypovitaminodosis D’) is described to be linked to specific hallmarks of age
