Are Tanning Beds Safe for your Skin?

Lying down in the sun isn't safe for your skin, and the sun is about 93 millions miles away, so what is the likelihood that lying in a tanning bed, where the impact of the ultra violet rays is greater, will be safe for your skin?! People can kid themselves that if they're just in a tanning bed for a few minutes a day that the risks of them developing skin cancer are not great, but surely over a long period of time this risk increases significantly.

Tanning beds help to facilitate the production of melanin. This melanin is actually skin damage caused by ultra violet rays, which have been proven to cause all three types of skin cancer; basil cell sarcoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and melanoma. Initially the tanning bed was developed to serve a medicinal purpose in the hope that increased sunlight could help those individuals with rickets and calcium deficiency disorders to develop stronger bones.

However, when some entrepreneurial figure came along and realised there was money to be made from an appearance-obsessed public the tanning bed became more about feeding people's vanity than any tenuous health benefits. Tans were, and still are, in fashion and tanning beds provide individuals with the opportunity to have a year-round tan without having to expose oneself in public and having to rely on the unpredictable weather (in the United Kingdom, at least!)

Not only are you at a greater risk of developing skin cancer from using tanning beds, your skin becomes wrinkly and leathery, helping you to age quicker. This is hardly a sign that tanning beds are good for your skin. You may well have a healthy' glow, but to many people it seems unnatural, and only provides short-term benefits since, after all you have to keep your tan topped-up'.

Indeed, some people find using tanning beds an addictive experience and end up looking excessively orange from overusing tanning beds. Such individuals are sometimes referred to as being tantastic' or tanorexic'. In some ways it easy to mock such individuals because they look so odd, but there are people with real problems who suffer pangs of guilt if they miss a tanning session.

This is why it is important to protect vulnerable, impressionable young people from believing that people look better with a perma-tan rather than just accepting their natural colour. It is only recently that the issue of tanning beds has been raised in the United Kingdom. The government is now leaning towards banning children under eighteen from using tanning beds and ensuring that tanning salons are staffed at all times with staff having to inform customers about potential risks of using tanning beds. This obviously does not preclude the use of tanning beds in individuals' homes, but it does begin to address this seeming obsession with being tanned all year round, and hopefully encouraging young people to think more about their health than their looks.