Here's why you shouldn't make TikTok star Nara Smith's DIY sunscreen
Nara Smith, we love you, but we will not be trying your DIY sunscreen!
Nara Smith is known for making things, such as bubblegum, toothpaste, yoghurt, and cereal, from scratch, but has she taken things one step too far with her homemade sunscreen recipe?
The TikTok star roped in her husband, Lucky Blue Smith, to help her make DIY sunscreen in their kitchen.
"We've been spending a lot of time outside by the pool and I realised that we ran out of sunscreen. I asked Lucky to make me some. We all burn pretty easily so we went with something with a little more SPF," she said in the video.
In the clip, which has been watched nearly 20-million times, Lucky can be seen adding coconut oil, beeswax, shea butter, and cocoa butter to a bowl. He then melts the ingredients over the stove and adds zinc oxide powder before putting them in the fridge to solidify.
"About an hour later, it was all solid and ready to apply. This went on so smoothly, and didn't leave a white cast," Nara says.
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@naraazizasmith 🤍 #fypツ #easyrecipe #sun #fromscratch #skincare #marriage ♬ Just Give Me One More Day - Alej
"Okay, now they playing with us😂. HOMEMADE SUNSCREEN?" one of Nara's 8.3-million TikTok followers commented.
"I didn’t even know you could make sunscreen from scratch," another user wrote. A third commented: "Y'all are going to FRY this summer with this concoction."
And fry they shall because skin experts strongly advise against making DIY sunscreen. Not only is it hard to tell how effective your homemade recipe will be, but the untested formula could also cause an allergic reaction.
It's not a good idea for adults or children.
Nara and her husband Lucky have three children - Rumble Honey, Slim Easy, and Whimsy Lou. Lucky also has an older daughter named Gravity Blue from a previous relationship.
“DIY sunscreen should be avoided as there is no way to know how effective the formulation is and how much protection it will actually provide. It may provide a false sense of security and leave someone susceptible to sunburn or potential for irritation," New York City board-certified dermatologist Marisa Garshick, MD, told Glamour magazine.
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Adarsh Vijay Mudgil, MD, a board-certified dermatologist, agrees. He says DIY sunscreen will not offer the sun protection you need.
“Many things applied to the skin have some degree of SPF, including some of the ingredients Nara used. But these may be an SPF 2 or 3, not SPF 30, which is what I recommend my patients use—and ideally one with a mineral component like titanium or zinc,” he told Glamour.
An article published on Formula Botanica also advises against making homemade sunscreen, especially ones that rely heavily on natural oils like coconut for protection. Natural oils alone do not absorb UV sufficiently, it says.
"Unfortunately, you can’t provide a good evenly distributed verifiable Sun Protection Factor (SPF) with a DIY recipe. In fact, making your own sunscreen is complicated, challenging and expensive. In some parts of the world, products which contain a SPF are viewed as pharmaceuticals (which is why we don’t teach our students how to make sunscreen at Formula Botanica). And even in those parts of the world where they are viewed as cosmetics, they still require rigorous and expensive testing."
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Main image credit: Instagram/@naraaziza, TikTok/naraazizasmith