Lucio Pavone, M.D.Specialty: Plastic Surgery, asked in the Healthy Driven blog, “Have you been outside more now that warm temperatures are at your doorstep?” Whether you’ve woken up early to begin gardening as soon as the sun reaches the horizon or you’ve gotten your kids outside early on the weekend for a ballgame, you may be forgetting one thing — sunscreen.

When you realize you forgot to wear sunscreen, it’s often too late. Once you feel that burning sensation on your skin, it doesn’t take long — your skin will be red and feel tight before you know it.

Exposure to the sun’s harmful rays can lead to more than just a sunburn, it can also lead to melanoma. You’ve probably been told to check your skin for any changes, like a new bump, blemish or dark, unsightly mole, but you should also check your skin for new spots since most melanoma starts from new changes in your skin and not existing moles.

In a recent study from the Journal of American Academy of Dermatology, researchers found that 29 percent of melanomas came from an existing mole on the body that changed. In 71 percent of the cases, melanoma occurred in a new lesion that popped up in a new place on the skin. Read more →