Sun poisoning is essentially a severe sunburn that goes beyond red, tender skin and triggers whole-body symptoms like nausea, fever, chills, and dizziness. Relief requires treating both the skin damage and the systemic effects happening inside your body. Most cases resolve at home within a week or so, but knowing what to do in the first hours makes a significant difference in how quickly you recover.
Cool Your Skin Down First
The single most important first step is lowering your skin temperature. Take a cool (not cold) bath or shower, keeping the water pressure gentle so it doesn’t aggravate the burn. If only a smaller area is affected, a cold compress like a wet towel works well. Place it gently on the burn until your skin feels cooler to the touch, then re-wet it and repeat. Don’t put ice packs directly on the burn, as the extreme cold can damage already-injured skin.
Cool compresses provide real relief from the burning sensation, but they’re also doing something functional: pulling heat out of inflamed tissue and slowing the inflammatory cascade that UV radiation set off in your skin cells. When UV light hits your skin intensely enough to cause sun poisoning, it degrades protective proteins inside skin cells, which allows immune sensors to activate and trigger widespread inflammation. Cooling the area helps dial that response down.
Hydrate Aggressively
Sun poisoning draws fluid from inside your body toward the damaged skin. This redistribution can leave you dehydrated fast, which is why so many sun poisoning symptoms (dizziness, rapid heartbeat, fatigue, confusion) overlap with dehydration symptoms. You need to drink significantly more water than usual, starting immediately.
Sports drinks or oral rehydration solutions that replace electrolytes are helpful here, especially if you’ve been vomiting. Avoid caffeinated or high-sugar drinks like sodas and energy drinks, which can worsen dehydration. A simple way to gauge whether you’re catching up: your urine should be pale and plentiful. If it’s dark or you’re barely urinating, you’re still behind on fluids.
Manage Pain and Inflammation
Over-the-counter anti-inflammatory pain relievers like ibuprofen help with both the pain and the underlying inflammation driving your symptoms. Taking one early, before the burn fully peaks, can reduce swelling and discomfort over the following days. A mild sunburn typically starts fading after about three days. Sun poisoning lasts longer and feels worse, so expect to manage symptoms for closer to a week.
Aloe vera gel (look for pure formulations without alcohol or fragrance) soothes the skin and helps retain moisture. Fragrance-free moisturizing lotions also work. Apply them after cooling the skin, not instead of it. If the burning is severe enough that even light clothing is painful, loose, soft fabrics and staying in air conditioning will help you get through the worst days.
Caring for Blisters
Blisters are your body’s way of protecting damaged skin underneath, and popping them invites infection. Leave them intact. If a blister breaks on its own, gently clean the area with mild soap and water and cover it loosely with a bandage to keep bacteria out.
Watch for signs of infection in the days that follow: pus inside or leaking from a blister, red streaks spreading outward from the burn, or increasing pain rather than gradually improving pain. These are signals that bacteria have entered the damaged skin and you need medical attention.
Sun Allergy vs. Severe Sunburn
The term “sun poisoning” actually covers two different conditions. The first is a severe sunburn with systemic symptoms, which is what most people mean. The second is a sun allergy called polymorphous light eruption, which produces dense clusters of small bumps, raised rough patches, and intense itching or burning. This rash typically appears 30 minutes to several hours after sun exposure, usually on skin that was covered during winter but exposed in warmer months (upper chest, neck, arms).
If your reaction looks more like a bumpy, itchy rash than a classic red burn, you may be dealing with this allergic-type response. It generally resolves on its own within 10 days without scarring. Persistent or severe cases sometimes require prescription medication, but the home care basics (cool compresses, staying out of the sun, anti-inflammatory pain relief) apply to both types.
When Sun Poisoning Needs Medical Care
Most sun poisoning resolves with the home measures above. But some cases cross a line where your body needs more help than you can provide at home. Seek medical attention if blisters cover more than roughly 20% of your body (think: your entire back, or both arms and your chest). A high fever with chills, persistent vomiting, confusion, or a rapid heartbeat that doesn’t settle also warrant a visit. These can signal severe dehydration that requires IV fluids.
If you’ve been treating the burn at home for a few days and you’re still experiencing extreme pain and widespread blistering with no improvement, that’s another clear signal to get evaluated. Sun poisoning should gradually improve, not plateau or worsen.
Preventing a Repeat Episode
Your skin will be more vulnerable to UV damage for weeks after sun poisoning, even after the visible burn heals. New skin that forms during the peeling phase has almost no built-in UV protection. Stay out of direct sun as much as possible during recovery, and when you do go outside, cover healing skin with clothing rather than relying solely on sunscreen. Tightly woven fabrics with long sleeves and a wide-brimmed hat are more reliable than any SPF product on damaged, peeling skin.
Once you’ve fully healed, broad-spectrum sunscreen with SPF 30 or higher, reapplied every two hours, is your baseline. People who’ve had sun poisoning once are often more susceptible to it again, either because of fair skin type or because of medication side effects that increase UV sensitivity (certain antibiotics, acne treatments, and blood pressure medications are common culprits). If your burn seemed disproportionate to your time in the sun, it’s worth checking whether anything you take could be making your skin more reactive.