Sunless Tanning Ups Skin Cancer Risk

September 21, 2010 Comments
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Even though winter ushers in longer nights and shorts days, the risk of exposure to UV rays is not less if you’re one of the millions of Americans who go to their local tanning booth to keep their tan throughout the winter. Though any form of UV light increases skin cancer risk, people younger than 30 who use tanning machines increase their risk of skin cancer by 75 percent, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is affiliated with the World Health Organization (WHO). The melanoma rate among young women nearly tripled from 1973 to 2004, a period in which use of tanning beds increased significantly, a National Cancer Institute study showed.

For Marcy Street, M.D., a board-certified dermatologist at Doctor’s Approach Dermatology and Laser Center in Lansing, Mich., and the country’s first African American female MOHS surgeon, the key to bringing the rate at which people under 30 get skin cancer is by educating them more fervently about the inherent dangers of tanning beds.

“We always ensure that if we see anyone, regardless of age, that we ask them if they are using tanning beds," she said. “We find the psychology behind the use of tanning beds is akin to the outlook of a smoker. As long as it doesn’t affect them negatively in an immediate sense, then they don’t think any harm is being done. It isn’t until we explain the ways in which UV rays mutate the cells of the skin that they start to listen. For us, it is a simple matter of explaining to the patient that while they believe they are improving their appearance or maintaining it somehow by using a tanning bed, the reality is that they are actually doing everything they can to destroy it, and the only thing they are doing for sure is accelerating ageing and putting themselves at risk for skin cancers."

“The outcomes and risks associated with the use of tanning beds dictate the severity of the message about those risks," she added.

This winter, it may be prudent to supplement with vitamin D and let that golden tan fade away instead of going to the local tanning salon.

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