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Health experts and doctors always remind people to put on sunscreen everyday all year round regardless of the forecast. Sunscreen can protect the skin from deadly sunrays that could lead to skin cancer and now, a new study reports that sunscreen can also slow down aging and prevent skin wrinkles. Even though some beauty gurus and experts have already touted sunscreen's abilities to protect the skin from sagging and premature aging, this study is one of the first ones to confirm that.

The study was composed of about 900 white Australian people who were between the ages of 25 and 55. The participants all had very fair skin that tended to burn as opposed to tan under the scorching sun in Australia. The majority of the group used sunscreen every day while two thirds of them utilized hats. The researchers randomly split the group into two. Half of them were asked to go about their daily protective routines against the sun, while the other half were asked to use a broad-spectrum sunscreen all of the time. The team also recruited another 900 people that were asked to take beta-carotene, which is a nutritional supplement that acted as the placebo. The study lasted for four and a half years.

The researchers observed that the group that used sunscreen every day had smoother and more resilient skin than the group that went about their daily routines. The researchers were able to measure the changes in skin because they made silicone casts of the participants' faces before and after the study. The researchers used scores ranging from zero, being the most resilient, to six, being the most aged. The median score in both groups was four. This score remained the same in the sunscreen group and increase by one point in the group that used their own methods. The beta-carotene group did not see any improvements in their skin as well. The sunscreen assigned to the group had an SPF, sun protection factor, of 15.

The researchers acknowledged that their findings could not be applied to darker skinned people since no one in the group had dark skin.  

The study was published in The Annals of Internal Medicine and it was paid for by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia