Everyone has heard by now that too much sun is bad for your skin, yet you still see normally pale-skinned people who stay nut-brown all year long—even in the depths of winter.
In the summer, they lie in the sun. In the winter, they lie in a padded coffin and have themselves irradiated.
The danger in both practices is that ultraviolet radiation, which promotes tanning, can also damage the genetic information inside skin cells, prematurely aging the skin and sometimes triggering cancer.
Why do people keep tanning, then? Recent studies are beginning to shed light (though hopefully not ultraviolet light) on this odd behavior.
A couple of years ago, researchers at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina studied 14 young adults who regularly used tanning beds. For six weeks, they tanned on Mondays and Wednesdays in two identical-looking beds, spending half of each session in one bed and half in the other. Only one of the beds, however, actually used ultraviolet light.
They found that those who had actually been exposed to ultraviolet light reported feeling more relaxed and less tense than those who had not been exposed to ultraviolet light. Not only that, but 12 of 14 took the researchers up on an offer for additional tanning on Fridays in the bed of their choice—and 95 percent of the time chose the bed with real ultraviolet light.
Previous laboratory studies had shown that the body released endorphins, a mood-altering substance similar in action to morphine, in response to ultraviolet light, so in a follow-up study, published a year ago, the same researchers decided to explore the role of endorphins in the relaxing effects of tanning. They took eight frequent tanners (eight to 15 times a month, more than necessary to maintain a tan) and eight infrequent tanners (no more than 12 times a year), and dosed half of them with an inactive drug and half with a drug that blocks the effects of endorphins.
When the subjects tanned in both the UV and non-UV beds, the frequent tanners no longer showed a marked preference for the UV bed. Not only that, but four of the eight frequent tanners reported feeling nauseated or jittery while taking the endorphin-blocking drug.
Now comes a brand-new study that indicates that, indeed, some people are literally addicted to ultraviolet light.
Researchers at the University of Washington had 385 male and female college students complete a multiple-choice questionnaire about, not only their tanning practices, but also those of their family and friends. Those who reported purposely tanning were asked an additional four questions, a modified version of what’s called the “cut-down, annoyed, guilty, eye-opener questionnaire tool” (CAGE for short): “Have you ever felt you ought to cut down on your tanning?” “Have people annoyed you by criticizing your tanning?” “Have you ever felt bad or guilty about your tanning?” and “Have you ever thought about tanning first thing in the morning?” These are the same questions used to identify what is known as a “substance-related disorder” with regard to alcohol use.
Seventy-six percent of the females and 59 percent of the males reported tanning on purpose. Of those, 42 percent of the females (but only 17 percent of males) reported using indoor tanning devices.
Twelve percent of the total sample of students, 18 percent of the outdoor tanners and a whopping 28 percent of the indoor tanners scored positively on the CAGE questions—indicating a substance-related disorder, with the “substance” in this case being ultraviolet light.
These percentages are in line with the results of studies of other addictions. For example, another study found that 18 percent of college students who said they drank alcohol also scored positively on the CAGE questionnaire, and yet another showed 16 percent of college students who smoked scored positively.
And as with other forms of addiction, merely being told the risks doesn’t have any effect on problem tanners. Having a family history of skin cancer is a known risk factor for skin cancer, and yet the students with a family history of skin cancer were even more likely to engage in tanning than those students with a known family history of skin cancer: 77 percent of those with a family history of skin cancer purposely tanned outdoors and 45 percent tanned indoors.
The best prevention? As with problem gambling, smoking and drinking, never to start.
Pasty white. It’s the new brown.
UPDATE: Here’s a link to a study I missed, “Anti-Cancer Gene Triggers Tanning,” which points out (as I didn’t in the article above) that tanning is part of the body’s mechanism to suppress the damage caused by ultraviolet radiation. Interestingly, the production of endorphins seems to be a side-effect of this cancer-suppression process.
This link was emailed to me by the media liaison for the Suntanning Association for Education, an organization which would like you to think of indoor tanning as a healthy lifestyle choice.
To each his own, of course. And an argument can be made for tanning relatively safely in order to avoid more dangerous sunburn: pasty white Canadians travelling to Florida in February might want to consider it, for instance, as a kind of inoculation, rather like making sure your immunizations are up to date before visiting Borneo. But I still think avoiding as much UV exposure as possible makes even more sense. And as a writer–I’m very good at such avoidance.
Unless you can get a sunburn from an LCD monitor. Hmmm…
2 comments
Yes, it answered a few questions for me, too.
Great column… I know some tanners and have always wondered what the appeal of Clint-Eastwood-leathery skin was for a twenty-something woman…