Why does skin keep being warm hours after getting a tan from sitting in the sun?
In: Biology
Excellent answer. Thank you!
The skin is warm because the UV light damage and even kill the cells in the skin. Sunburn is radiation damage on the skin cells with DNA and other cellular damage. The damages cells kill themself in Apoptosis, programmed cell death when they can’t fix the damage.
It fundamentally not different from other radiation damage that radiative material, X-ray etc can give you. The difference is that the damage is just to the top layer of the skin and not the whole body.
The skin feel warm because there is more blood flow to help in the healing process. It is not different from other damages where it feels warm because the body heats up with more blood flow.
So the warm skin is a body response to the damage of the UV light on the cells in your skin
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