14 DAY TRIAL // There will come a day when we will no longer have to remember to pack liquid sunscreen to go to the beach, as long as we remember to take a pill, researchers promise. Coral holds the key to effective protection against the sun for both skin and eyes.
In a context in which many still assume sun lotions are optional, or only to be used if they want a more beautiful tan (neither of which is valid), British researchers believe they can make sunscreen into a pill.
The Guardian reports that scientists have long been studying the way coral protects itself from the harmful rays of the sun and they’ve now come to the conclusion that they can create a synthetic sunscreen from it.
Even more, they’re convinced such a pill will become available sometime in the next 5 years. However, it will be sold only based on prescription, since skin reaction to UV rays is not entirely negative, the aforementioned publication notes.
Overdosing on the sunscreen pill would mean a vitamin D deficiency, and that’s the last thing researchers would want.
“What we have found is that the algae living within the coral makes a compound that we think is transported to the coral, which then modifies it into a sunscreen for the benefit of both the coral and the algae,” Dr. Paul Long, head of the project at King’s College London, says for The Guardian.
“Not only does this protect them both from UV damage, but we have seen that fish that feed on the coral also benefit from this sunscreen protection, so it is clearly passed up the food chain,” Dr. Long explains.
Long and his team are now trying to determine the composition of the compound, in order to replicate it and make it available to humans as sunscreen in a pill.
“We are very close to being able to reproduce this compound in the lab, and if all goes well we would expect to test it within the next two years,” Dr. Long promises.