A sunscreen pill designed to help protect your tender skin from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays sounds like a very good idea to me. As someone who absolutely loathes lotions and oils of any variety, I would be the first test subject in line to pop a pill just to escape rubbing this sort of stuff all over my body. Thankfully, I don’t spend very much of my free time in the sun, which means that I rarely have to bother with this sort of activity to begin with. Score one for the shut-in.

However, for those with a sun fetish and a natural aversion to liquid sunscreen, scientists may have something in the works that’s right up your alley. Researchers are currently working on a pill that should, in theory, help protect your body from the effects of the sun. This oral solution, which is fashioned using chemicals found in coral, is still a few years away from appearing on retails shelves. Still, the thought of abandoning lotions altogether is kind of appealing.

Of course, if popping pills isn’t your bag, then perhaps you’d be more interested in something along the lines of Scenesse. Instead of taking medication or coating your flesh with protective solutions, this alternative is implanted directly into your skin, which then secretes hormones that increase the amount of melanin your body produces. This, too, is still about two years away from becoming available for public consumption.

One concern that’s on the tip of everyone’s tongues are the side effects generally associated with taking pills. Nowadays, you can’t go more than five minutes without encountering a commercial or an advertisement for a medication that has a laundry list of potential dangers. For a lot of people, this could be a deal-beaker. Having to contend with the oily aftermath of sunscreen lotion is one thing, congestive heart failure from a sunscreen pill is something else entirely.