Tom Brady Thinks Drinking Water Will Protect You From the Sun Like Actual Sunscreen
By Macaela Mackenzie. Photo by: Getty Images.
We hear a lot of, erm, out-there beauty advice — making your own toothpaste out of clay, getting plasma transfusions from young blood to fight Father Time, whatever treatment is getting Goop's stamp of approval at the moment — but this recommendation from none other than Tom Brady is downright dangerous.
If there are humanoid robots walking among us, I'd be willing to bet Brady is one of them — he's literally studied as a sample of athletic performance. As such, his new book The TB12 Method: How to Achieve a Lifetime of Peak Performance, is chock full of advice on how to turn your mortal human body into a finely tuned machine, just like his. One teeny issue, though: Some of Brady's advice is more science fiction than rooted in actual science — especially his thoughts on sun protection.
In a recent ESPN profile, Brady says instead of using sunscreen, he drinks a ton of water to protect his skin from the sun. Confused? Yeah, us, too.
"Every day, he wakes up at six in the morning and immediately drinks 20 ounces of purified water, augmented with TB12 electrolytes, which, as he tells us, contain the '72 trace minerals' generally lost in perspiration," ESPN writes. "As a result, he says, he is so well-hydrated that 'even with adequate exposure to the sun, I won't get sunburned,' and he presumes that the muscles under his skin look like 'beautiful tenderloins' instead of 'shriveled jerky.'" He also includes the same sun advice in his book, reports The Cut.
While I have to commend Brady on that super on-point imagery (#tenderloinskin), his advice is seriously flawed. "There is absolutely no evidence that suggests that drinking large amounts of water could serve as a replacement for proven sun protective methods like sunscreen," Sejal Shah, a New York City-based dermatologist, tells Allure.
Taking Brady's advice here would be dangerous. "Using water consumption as sun protection in exchange for proven protective methods will expose your skin to the harmful effects of ultraviolet radiation," says Shah. "Ultraviolet radiation can be very damaging to the skin and lead to sunburn, brown spots, premature aging, and skin cancer."
Sorry, Brady, the ruling on sun protection is in: Wear your sunscreen — always.
This story originally appeared on Allure.
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