How to Track Your Sun Exposure With This New App
Faced with a heat wave this summer? There is a new beta application for iPhones from the founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, which helps you follow your exposure to the sun. The Sun Day application is free for testers and contains information such as sunrise, sunset and UV index in order to assess your potential burn-limite time and, as the description of the application says, “follow your vitamin D from the sun.”
Dorsey is currently testing updates to the user interface and a MIDI solar notification, depending on the application notes. In the application, you can describe the type of clothing you wear, such as shorts and t-shirts or swimsuits, and your Fitzpatrick skin type, which classifies the speed with which you burn.
The iOS application requests permission to connect to certain Apple health data when the application is installed.
Dorsey has also recently published Bitchat, a private messaging client who uses Bluetooth as a communication platform. Although it is supposed to be a secure private application, some users have reported Bitchat for potential security defects that are always tested.
How to test the Sun Day application
If you have an iOS device, download the Sun Day Testflight application from the App Store, then follow the link to the application for Sun Day to reach the beta test.
The effectiveness of an application such that Sun Day depends on giving precise information on your skin type and your clothes, and although vitamin D levels are a way of assessing exposure to UV, it is not infallible since some people also take vitamin D supplements.
“The new application of Jack Dorsey Sun Day is exciting, not to detect vitamin D levels but really to help us understand our UV index which is so important in solar security,” said Tanya Kormeili, a dermatologist based in Los Angeles. “The application has an interesting promise as far as I am concerned, in that the use of the UV index can show you the risk of level of exposure to UV.”
The risks of too much sun exposure include sunburn, skin aging and skin cancer. UV level monitoring is a way to help alleviate these risks.
People tend to think about exposure to the sun and protections as the most sunscreen during the summer, when the sun is strongest and the days are long, and when you head for the beach or gardening, golf or others in the time of the quality sun. But there is always a risk of damage in the sun to your skin while you are outside – all year round.
“Sometimes it is difficult for patients to be convinced that there can be an excessive UV risk one day cloudy,” says Kormeili. “The application would provide an objective measure of this UV index and would guide you in safer solar practices.”
The dermatologist suggests that Dorsey puts the application for public consumption without medical experts approving this could be a missed opportunity. “I am surprised that they did not involve real dermatologists to indicate the real value and the limits of this application,” she said.
