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The Price of a Perfect Tan
by Jon Platner, 12.06.02
Updated April 2008
In the long-term, tanning causes wrinkles and rapid aging. |
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You walk into a salon expecting to come out with a healthy and sexy look. What you get instead is damage to your body that can be both deadly and unattractive. Sound like a scene from a twisted nightmare?
Unfortunately, the scenario is very real. Each year in the United States, skin cancer is diagnosed in more than one million people, and a growing number are young people who visit tanning salons.
The appeal of bronzed bods is growing, and a sunless tan can be very tempting. But beware — just like natural tanning, indoor tanning comes with serious risks.
Skin Cancer 101
The primary risk factor of skin cancer is exposure to ultraviolet (UV) light. There are three main forms of skin cancer — basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and melanoma. Melanoma is the most serious of these.
If melanoma is diagnosed early enough, it can be 100 percent curable. But once the cancer develops and spreads to other parts of the body, it becomes hard to treat and can be deadly. Regular skin exams from your doctor and self-examinations are the best ways for early detection.
The Stats
According to the American Cancer Society
- For young women 15-29, rates of melanoma have grown more than 60 percent since the mid-1970s.
- Skin cancer is now the most common cancer in young people aged 25-29, and is second only to breast cancer in women aged 30-34.
- Nearly half of all new cancers are skin cancers.
- One person dies every hour from skin cancer. An estimated 10,850 people will die of skin cancer this year alone.
According to the National Cancer Institute, skin cancer is now the most common cancer in young people aged 25-29, and is second only to Hodgkin lymphoma in young people aged 15-29.
Little Salon of Horrors
Why do teens tan? "I get really tan during the summer, so it frustrates me that I look pale in the winter," says 17-year-old Lisa, one of the 28 million Americans who tan indoors each year at about 25,000 tanning salons around the country. "I come out of a tanning salon looking like I have some color in me."
Many teens like Lisa are under the impression that tanning salons are harmless and healthy. But this is a dangerous myth! The sunlamps in tanning beds have high levels of UV radiation, and being artificial doesn't make the light safe. According to a study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, users of tanning lamps were 2.5 times more likely to develop squamous cell carcinoma and 1.5 times more likely to develop basal cell carcinoma than people who didn't use the lamps.
Tanning can also have appearance-damaging effects. In the long-term, tanning causes wrinkles and rapid aging.
A Safe Alternative
Even after reading these facts, the pressure to look good can make a sunless tan very appealing. But there are safe alternatives to tanning salons in the form of spray-on and rub-on products. Self-tanning creams put pigment in the dead layer of your skin giving the appearance of a tan in as little as 24 hours.
When these products first arrived on the market, they tended to a produce a fake-looking tan, but they've been improved so that now you really can achieve an authentic bronze look without running the risks of wrinkles and cancer. These creams don't provide any protection on their own, but certain ones also contain a sunscreen that does — so choose wisely. And hey, there's always your natural glow! |
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