Vitiligo in the summertime

Last Updated on 1st July 2023 by Caroline Haye

2 conclusions and 4 tips for UV exposure

​Many of us have emerged from what has seemed like endless chilly winter months. And, naturally, we are relishing the light evenings and general warmth of summer. (Although, for many people with vitiligo, this brings with it additional anxiety over their skin.) As the years since my re-pigmentation pass (and as I get older) I find I crave sunlight more and more. So I love everything about this time of year, especially the chance to get outside into those healing rays. But dealing with my vitiligo in the summertime was not always something I looked forward to.

The years I used to spend dreading hot and sunny weather seem to belong to another life now. Yet the memory of those feelings is still very clear in my mind. I remember how I felt at the prospect of having to cover up my vitiligo patches with clothing or cosmetics to avoid social embarrassment. Especially when everyone around me was baring their flesh with carefree abandon. It used to plunge me into a state of gloom, bordering on bitterness and self-pity… Unattractive emotions that I used to mask just as carefully as I camouflaged my white patches.

What has changed

The whole rigmarole of hiding my vitiligo during the summer, and hiding my feelings about it, was troublesome and quite exhausting. I simply never came to terms with the condition sufficiently to go anywhere without my make-up or self-tan. Or at least with my flesh expertly covered in well-chosen clothing. This often left me feeling tense and on edge throughout the very season when I should have been relaxing and enjoying outdoor fun with family and friends.

Nowadays, the only time I revisit those emotions is when I hear from others who are going through the same thing. Some of the most frequently asked questions I receive each spring and summer relate to the pros and cons of sun exposure… Whether or not to avoid it, whether to use sun protection and, if so, what kind, etc. And I have attempted to answer these on the page, Is sunshine good for vitiligo?

What I have learned about vitiligo and sun exposure

In this blog, I would like to share some of my own experiences and impressions around this issue, in case you are wrestling with it yourself at the moment. The following comments are based on my own observations, as opposed to any formal, scientific evidence. But I hope you find them useful anyway.

Despite my first small patches of vitiligo developing when I was just a toddler, family photos show that I did otherwise develop a light, even tan whenever I spent time outdoors. By the time I reached my teens I noticed that my annual sunbathing ritual in pursuit of a fashionable tan was leaving me with several new vitiligo lesions each summer. My perception of this was that my sunbathing was not the cause of my pigment loss. Rather, I think it simply revealed a process that had been occurring throughout the rest of the year.

It felt like a race against the inevitable

I could see that the condition was spreading. And it began to feel like a race against the inevitable to see how many more years I could enjoy developing a natural tan. (With the aid, by then, of some camouflage here and there). Sooner or later, I would have to start avoiding the sun altogether so as to make the contrast between my vitiligo and my normal skin less obvious.

Eventually, the effort involved in trying to tan at the same time as hiding my white splotches became too much… Added to which the de-pigmented skin was very prone to sunburn. I used to find I could only stay out in strong sunshine for about a minute before it started to burn. I used to feel myself frazzling, almost as if my skin was in contact with a red-hot poker. So I started to avoid sun exposure as much as possible, which I found quite depressing.

​I now know that avoiding the sun is not only bad for morale but it further lowers vitamin D levels, which are typically lower than normal in vitiligo sufferers to start with. And even if you use sun protection creams you increase the risk of chemically aggravating your vitiligo. So, if sunbathing makes vitiligo patches burn and increases the contrast between them and the surrounding skin and SPFs are potential irritants, what is a person to do?

2 conclusions about sunshine and vitiligo

Well, my own experiences and research have led me to the following conclusion. That UV light (whether sunlight or artificial UV) helps to reverse vitiligo but generally only in the following circumstances …

1. When you administer it in carefully calculated increments over an extended period of time. (As in the case of clinical phototherapy)… In which case varying degrees of re-pigmentation are likely to occur and these results are unlikely to be permanent, or…
2. When you take it in regular, moderate (and not necessarily incremental) doses. And in conjunction with specific nutritional supplementation and antioxidant protection… In which case good levels of re-pigmentation are likely to occur and results are much more likely to be permanent.

​I was one of those cases for whom phototherapy alone was completely unsuccessful. I had tried PUVA as a young woman. But it had no effect whatsoever on my vitiligo, except to make it sore. It turned pink, then pure white again.

​I have come to believe that this is what happens when you try to “force“ the tanning process to occur. (In this case by simply using a photosensitising agent plus UV light, without giving the body sufficient nutrients for the pigmentation to take place.)

Nutrition made all the difference for me

It was not until I started to take supplemental tanning-friendly nutrients (in the form of Boost) and strong antioxidant protection (plus a variety of additional nutritional support in the form of Five a Day green formula) that UV exposure began to re-pigment my vitiligo patches instead of burning them. This experience confirmed some suspicions about the triggers for my vitiligo. I suspected that the digestive problems I had always had since early childhood, must have left me depleted in these nutrients. And that this was the reason for my vitiligo. (As well as for the Chronic Fatigue that had plagued me since early adulthood.)

​Once I had been taking supplements for a week or so I noticed I was able to stay outside for significantly longer without burning. After doing this for several weeks, my pigment started to return. And this process continued until virtually all of my natural colour had come back. When I then switched to narrowband UVB therapy through the winter months I found my nutritional therapy a dramatically different experience from my previous experiment with PUVA. Not only did the UVB continue the rapid re-pigmentation that had started during the summer, it actually seemed to accelerate it.

​I believe that, as long as you are providing correct nutritional support to your body, it does not make a huge difference whether you use natural sunshine or medical phototherapy instead. Phototherapy has the advantage of being available year round and of being easier to administer with scientific precision. But sunshine is free of charge and a much more pleasant relaxing experience 🙂

My top 4 tips on UV exposure

Since people often ask me about sun protection products, here four of my top tips…

1. While it is important for everyone to avoid sunburn, using a sunscreen rather defeats the object of UV therapy and also hinders the production of vitamin D. So I believe it is better to get full UV exposure but limit its intensity and duration to avoid overdoing it;
2. When skin turns a bit pink and feels slightly tight, this is not the same thing as a sunburn. It is a state known as erythema. And it tends to indicate the UV dosage level required to stimulate new pigment, so a moderate erythema is, in fact, what you should be aiming for when undergoing UV therapy for vitiligo;
3. Even though vitiligo patches are often more prone to burning than normally pigmented skin, warnings about an increased risk of skin cancers in vitiligo are incorrect. In fact vitiligo sufferers have greater defences against this type of cancer than other people;
4. If you absolutely need to use sun protection because you have to be outside for extended periods in the summertime or at the hottest times of the day, this is obviously a wise thing to do rather than risk burning.  On these occasions my sun protection of choice is always a 100% natural mineral sunblock, not a chemical-based product.

Final thoughts on vitiligo in the summertime

It’s fair to say that my relationship with sunshine has changed dramatically over the years. As a child I loved it. As a teenager I struggled to hang on to that enjoyment. For much of my adult life I feared and avoided it. Now I see it as a source of warmth, relaxation, enjoyment and – above all – healing. I really hope that anyone reading this and finding themselves in a dark place this summer (either literally or emotionally) might start to view it more positively too. Instead of dreading the sun and what effect it will have on your vitiligo in the summertime, maybe you will decide to welcome it. And hopefully you will use it as a vital part of your journey back to health.  I do hope so.