Glycerin might sound like a scary ingredient, but it's a product naturally derived from plant and animal fats. As a skincare ingredient, it keeps skin moist and supple.

You've been advised countless times about the dangers of too much sun, but you got a sunburn anyway. Now what? Here's everything you need to know about healing your sunburn.

While Unilever, the corporation that owns the Noxzema brand, admits this product hasn’t been tested for treating sunburns, many people use it for this purpose.

The pH scale measures the acidity or alkalinity of a substance. Your skin has a pH measurement too. When substances with different pH levels come into contact, chemical reactions often occur. The soaps, lotions and other products you use can have an effect on the pH, and thereby the health, of your skin.

According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disorders (NIDDK), the thyroid gland makes two hormones (triiodothyronine and thyroxine) that affect the amount of moisture in the skin.

Hydroquinone is an ingredient found in many skin-lightening products marketed to women for purposes of reducing age spots, melasma, freckles and other types of hyperpigmentation. In 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed a rule that hydroquinone be considered "

While several factors may contribute to irregular skin pigmentation, the condition often results from repeated episodes of sunburn, notes MedlinePlus. The look of patchy or mottled skin stems from an overproduction of the skin pigment known as melanin, which your body produces as a defense against the sun’s UV rays.

Skin bleaching is popular with darker-skinned people to obtain a more even skin tone, but skin bleaching cream is also often used to lighten sun damage and age spots on the skin in people of all skin colors.

After a sunburn, a thin layer of skin may flake or peel off from the damaged area. The peeling usually starts a few days after a sunburn and may continue for about a week. While a sunburn itself is painful, peeling typically is not as the shedding skin is dead.

If you spent a day at the beach without sunscreen, you may be paying for it with an itchy sunburn. The best ways to minimize your risk of sunburn and resultant skin damage are to stay out of the sun between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.

Aluminum in its usual form is not harmful to the skin or any other body part. It naturally occurs as part of the earth's crust and is commonly used for many products from soda cans to space shuttles.

Always use sunscreen when you spend time outside. But if you fail to do so, you can take steps to help reduce the redness of sunburn, as well as decrease the chances of permanently damaging your skin. Skin that has already incurred damage from the sun may have hyperpigmentation or age spots, says More magazine.