The temperatures are dropping. The sky is starting to get dark at 4 p.m. Our glowing summer skin has faded away. And many of us are missing the sun and longing for our tan to return.
When I was young, my parents would lather me up in suntan lotion. In school, we learned you get skin cancer if you don’t wear sunscreen in the sun. Then you hit those rebellious teen years and think, “Hey, I’m young, I’m not getting cancer anytime soon — what’s wrong with a little tan?”
Let me first begin by explaining what a suntan is and what a sunburn is. Basically, a sunburn is an acute toxic reaction to the UVA and UVB rays that the sun emits. These high-energy ultraviolet rays damage the molecules in your skin, mainly DNA. This causes different proteins and enzymes to be synthesized. Next, the blood vessels underneath your skin begin to dilate and inflammatory cells are sent in, which is what produces a sunburn’s characteristic redness and pain. Sometimes, the rays are enough to actually kill your skin cells, which is what has occurred when your skin peels following a sunburn. Gross. Scary, too, right?
What does this mean? Usually, the body has mechanisms to repair this damaged DNA. But the more time you spend in the sun, the higher the chances your body will fall short in its repair processes. This mutated DNA can lead to skin cancer. You can’t throw all this harm at your body and always expect it to unscrew it up for you.
That’s a sunburn. Now, a suntan is basically the same, but some people tan while their DNA is getting mutated, and others burn. The tanners end up spending more time exposing their skin to UV rays because they feel they are safe as long as their skin isn’t burnt-looking. Those who don’t tan easily might visit the tanning salon before a tropical vacation to give them the “base tan” they need to prevent getting burnt. According to Dr. Martin Weinstock from the American Cancer Society, this “base-tanning” only multiplies their radiation exposure, increasing the risk of developing skin cancer.
The ACS has also found that people age 35 or younger who used tanning beds regularly have a melanoma risk eight times higher than those who never have. Even those who occasionally used tanning beds nearly tripled their chances of developing melanoma. We aren’t talking about 70-year-old skin cancer patients — we’re talking about people our age developing skin cancer.
Ironically, and unfortunately as it turns out, tanned skin has become an indicator in our society of a healthier person. Ever heard the expression, “a nice, healthy tan?” According to a 2006 study released in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, respondents overwhelmingly indicated they perceived a medium tan as healthiest and most attractive, and saw “no tan” as both least healthy and least attractive.
While on the topic of how sun exposure could possibly improve your health, it is important to mention the importance of some UVB exposure, which allows our bodies to produce Vitamin D — an essential vitamin for healthy immune function and helpful for a slew of other body systems to function normally. However, most doctors agree you can produce enough Vitamin D in just 15 to 30 minutes of sun exposure per week. We get this simply walking from class to class in a day. Also, if you are trying to assert you go to the tanning salon so you can get enough Vitamin D, you are a) lying to yourself and b) wrong — most of the rays that tanning beds provide are UVA, which don’t help us produce Vitamin D.
For the past few years, I have willingly made myself tan. I am of Irish-Swedish-English-German heritage, have blue eyes and blonde hair and a tan. One of these things just doesn’t belong. I have been asked how I manage to get tan with this pale-skin ancestry. I usually reply, “Not sure, I’ve just always tanned easily.” This would be partially true, if I considered hours trekking to the tanning salon and paying hundreds of dollars to have UV rays blasted at my skin easy. Such a great deal of time, money and effort going toward something that is so bad for me.
I wanted to write this column so I would have a permanent, written vow that I would give up tanning for the next year. Now, I feel confident I could give it up for the rest of my life. If you had any understanding of my love for sun and of having golden skin, you would see how lofty a goal this is. But this is the only skin I’m going to get, so I have to look out for it. I encourage my tanning-obsessed readers to join in and kick their tanning habits too.
Cheers to our skin, and being happy with the color we were born with.
You can reach this columnist at kbarrett@theeagleonline.com.
