Sunbathing– if you need to do it– need to be restricted to every other day, a brand-new research study recommends. You’ll get darker and avoid some skin damage.

That’s because skin makes the protective pigment melanin just every 48 hours, scientists report October 25 in Molecular Cell Daily sunbathing can interrupt the pigment’s production and leave skin susceptible to harm from ultraviolet light.

A protein called MITF collaborates skin-darkening melanin production with other skin defense systems in reaction to UV light, molecular geneticist Carmit Levy of Tel Aviv University and her coworkers found. The group shone UV-B light on mice every 24, 48 or 72 hours for 60 days. Mice exposed to UV-B radiation on the 48- hour schedule established darker skin and had less DNA damage than mice in the other groups. Mouse and human skin cells grown in laboratory meals that were exposed to UV light every other day likewise made more melanin than cells that were irradiated daily.

Other explores skin cells in meals recommend that within minutes of UV direct exposure, MITF switches on genes associated with skin cell survival. Those genes make proteins taken part in swelling, DNA repair work and recruitment of immune cells to the skin. Just later on does MITF provide the OKAY for melanin production to start. Hitting cells with day-to-day UV disrupts melanin production, leaving skin without its protective guard, the scientists discovered.