Health & Fitness
Tanning: Is It Really Worth The Risks?
The quest for that popular bronze look can result in many forms of skin cancer and accelerated aging such as wrinkles, brown spots and enlarged pores. Is it really worth it?
A tan to most teens and young adults is a necessity these days. With more tanning salons than Starbucks in most cities, tanning is everywhere.
But a tan is bad news, whether you acquire your bronze color from a tanning bed or lying by the pool. A tan is your body’s way of telling you that your skin is injured by the ultra violet (UV) rays that you are exposed to everyday.
The two most common types of UV rays are UVA and UVB. You may have heard of the newer tanning beds that tan without a sunburn, which is because they use only UVA rays. By not having UVB rays, you are taking away your body’s warning sign of sunburn. The UVA rays may give you the glow you want, but they are also responsible for causing wrinkles, brown spots, larger pore size, and of course skin cancer.
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One should think twice about tanning for cosmetic reasons because the tan you want now can actually accelerate the aging process and could lead to melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. So, why is that most teens and young adults who tan know these risks and keep on tanning? A recent survey by the American Academy of Dermatology found that 86 percent of their respondents who tan indoors know the risks and still continue to tan. With numbers like these, it’s obvious that these teens and young adults are more concerned with their current appearance than their health in the future. If this trend continues and we cannot change the popularity of tanned skin, our future generations will develop more skin cancers earlier in life, which can be fatal.