Preventive care seeks to protect against threats to your health by taking precautions ahead of time. Simple as that. It’s better to slather on the sunscreen and prevent skin damage than apply aloe to a painful sunburn. This video provides resources to show kids why it’s important to practice mouth-safety, including applying sunscreen to their lips while outdoors.
Preventative care means that you’re taking care of your health before things become issues. Examples of this include toothpaste and sunscreen. By doing things like wearing a mouthguard when you play sports and games with equipment and going to the dentist twice a year, you can prevent damage to your smile. You can prevent a sunburn by applying sunscreen, but in the event that you forget and get a sunburn, take these steps to heal and ease the pain.
When facing a sunburn on your lips, take an anti-inflammatory to reduce the pain, apply aloe vera to reduce the feeling of burning, use a cold compress to soothe the area, and moisturize to help the skin repair and heal. Continual burning increases the risk of getting skin cancer. To prevent this, make sure to apply lip balm that is a minimum of SPF 30.
While it is best to prevent a sunburn before it happens, sunburns do happen sometimes and it’s important to know how to take care of them. Keep these tips in mind to have a quick and relatively painless recovery. Use this as a lesson so that you can keep your lips burn free in the future!
Discussion Questions
What does prevention mean?
How else can you prevent injuries to your mouth and body?
Why should you wear sunscreen on your lips?
In your own words, how can you treat your lips after they become sunburnt?
Have you ever had a sunburn on your lips?