Why Does the Sun Make Your Skin Darker, but Your Hair Lighter?

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Sunlight makes a lot of people's skin darker because it stimulates melanocytes in your skin that is alive, important, to make more melanin. And so that is a physiological response that is activated by sunlight. So if you have already like relatively little melanin in your hair, your hair can undergo what is called photobleaching - which really just means the pigment was destroyed by light and it's not there anymore. We have evidence of humans playing around with ochre 200,000 years ago. But we can't know for sure when they started using it.

Skin color! Hair texture! Biological anthropology! The incredibly informed and infectiously funny Dr. Tina Lasisi joins to chat sunscreen, ashiness, redheads, light skin, dark skin, in-between skin, beards, UVAs, UVBs, shower habits, cultural colloquialisms, vitiligo, melasma, medical math, ocher, freckles and more. Dr. Lasisi is about to become your new favorite science communication and internet friend. Also: sunscreen, people.

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