Susan (Hobart, Tasmania) on 03/05/2010:

After working up on our roof one day, my boyfriend and I got a bit sunburnt. Naughty, I know.

I keep DMSO in the cupboard for other uses -- boyfriend's inflammatory back pain, my foot pain (plantar fasciitis) as well as other general inflammatory ailments. I had read it was useful for healing heat burns, so I thought I'd try it for sunburn. Everything I've read about DMSO warns to make sure the skin is completely clean of chemical residues. I guess the only way to be sure is to very thoroughly exfoliate the area, so I did this in the shower with a "skin-peel" cloth (no soaps or other chemicals, it's purely mechanical exfoliation). After I'd towelled off I dabbed on some DMSO with a cotton swab. For anyone who's not familiar with the effects of DMSO -- it provides almost instant relief for pain when applied topically. So the burning stopped as soon as I put this on. I let it soak into my skin for about 5 mins, then with another cotton swab rubbed extra-virgin coconut oil into the skin. Well, what a relief! It took the stinging and heat out of my skin straight away. I repeated this several times that night, wearing a clean cotton t-shirt (with no fabric softener in it, just to be sure). It healed really quickly, didn't peel like my boyfriend's sunburn did, and kept my skin looking really good.

It seems like DMSO helps your skin absorb more of what you put on it, so it stands to reason that the EVCO was more able to penetrate my skin and help it "heal". I'm sure the antioxidant properties of the oil were a help to my sun-damaged skin -- as we all know, sun exposure stimulates production of free-radicals, which can cause cancer. I'm not saying this will stop you getting skin-cancer from sunburn, but it did help heal the damage or prevent it from being as bad as it should have. There are also some studies which have suggested a certain level of protection offered by extra virgin coconut oil, that it helps the skin's natural defences where UV light is concerned. Perhaps this is because EVCO is one of the closest substances to human sebum.