Sunburn back

No Really, Vinegar Is Great For Sunburn

Who would have thought that plain old vinegar would be the best thing to take the sting and colour out of sunburn?

Sunburn back

THIS STUFF WORKS | If I were forced to go back to grade school in the coming days and then asked to write an essay about the coolest thing I learned on my time away from the classroom, I would definitely wax lyrical about how I discovered that common household vinegar is a rock solid remedy for sunburn.

Going For The Burn

Face to face

I usually apply sunscreen when I am out on a boat, but the one time this summer that I didn’t do it, I got a crispy sunburn on my shins and the tops of my flip-flop loving feet.

“Did we bring the vinegar?” my friend Heather asked her skipper husband Tom after gazing at my red, hot legs following a particularly sunny afternoon sail on their boat.

“The what?” I asked, imagining myself slathered in Annie’s salad dressing.

“The vinegar,” Tom repeated, digging into a duffle and pulling out a spritzer bottle with clear liquid in it. “Let me see those legs of yours,” he said, spraying the front of each one of them with a fine and stinky mist.

Tom assured me that the sharp smell of vinegar would dissipate after a few minutes, and it did. He told me the acid in the vinegar would soothe my pain, stop my skin from getting redder and actually cause it to turn a golden brown—all of which it did. What a surprise.—Ruth Rainey

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