Caution, Spring Break tanners
Spring Break and warm weather clothing are incentives to tan pasty skin before revealing it to the world, but those who are cautious and wise about skin cancer risks will avoid the use of tanning beds, according to a 10-year study.
“I look deathly sick in the winter and [tanning] gives me color,” said Holly Anderson, a senior majoring in print journalism. Anderson said she tans during the winter season once every three weeks to achieve her tan color.
“I wouldn’t go all the time, because girls who do look orange. It’s not the look I am going for,” Anderson said.
A recent article in Journal Watch Women’s Health demonstrated solid evidence that tanning by use of sunlight and tanning beds is associated to skin cancer, said Linda Roberts, a registered nurse at the Student Health and Wellness Center.
The Journal of National Cancer Institute, published last October, discovered in a 10-year-study involving about 106,379 fair-skinned women from the Women’s Lifestyle and Health Cohort Study that melanoma risk increased significantly with number of sunburns and with use of artificial-light tanning devices.
“Risks increased with women who had early skin damage as an adolescent,” Roberts said.
Roberts said the only thing she as a health care provider can do is inform people so they can make good decisions, until the cultural values of tanning seen as beautiful change.
An individual’s responsibility is to take care of themselves while applying information they already know, Roberts said.
“It’s what a cautious and wise person would do,” Roberts said.
Anderson studied abroad at Costa Rica and said she used a tanning bed during her stay. And even though she reached her maximum tan by visiting beaches every weekend she said she kept comparing herself to Costa Ricans who were naturally darker than her.
“I didn’t think I was tan enough,” Anderson said.
Roberts said risks of long-term exposure to UV rays have always been suspected, even before the recent Women’s Lifestyle and Health Cohort Study came out, but some still make choices that are unhealthy to their bodies.
“A lot of people have the misconception that a tan is healthy and beautiful, but tanning is a result of skin injury and occurs when UV rays penetrate the skin and protects it by producing more pigment or melanin,” said Marla Homer, a medical assistant at the local Rocky Mountain Dermatology Clinic.
Women are not more susceptible to skin cancer than men because, “Skin is skin,” Homer said; yet women go tanning more often than men.
UV rays from a tanning bed are just as dangerous as those from the sun and damages result in wrinkles, leathery skin, premature aging or skin cancer, Homer said. Accumulation damages done by UV rays to the skin will show 20 years later. Short ultraviolet-B (UVB) rays from the sun make skin burn and appear red like the longer ultraviolet-A (UVA) waves from tanning beds.
“The UVA waves penetrate deeper in the skin,” Homer said
Myths can also detour people from making healthy decisions, such as thinking the use of tanning beds would offer beneficial treatment for seasonal affective disorder (seasonal depression). Seasonal affective disorder usually occurs during winter months when people are lacking sunlight.
Anderson said she usually lays in a tanning bed for 20 minutes at a time listening to music, “It’s relaxing and gives me time to myself.”
A common treatment for seasonal affective disorder is phototherapy (light therapy). A patient receives treatment for the disorder by putting their face in a boxed lighting system. The system uses a set of special bulbs and a diffusing screen to help block harmful UV rays. As bright lights enter the eye sending information to the brain and alerting areas that will regulate a person’s internal clock and mood.
Roberts said proper diagnosis and treatment for seasonal affective disorder is necessary and people shouldn’t use tanning beds because they think they are depressed.
“The sun is a necessity to being healthy [because it provides vitamin D] but too much [sun] damages the skin,” Homer said.
Eighty percent of sun damages to skin occur before the age of 18. Homer said she doesn’t think people should be afraid of the sun but must protect themselves by wearing sunscreen and a T-shirt.
Anderson said she went tanning a lot more frequently in high school than in college because she has become more aware of tanning and its relationship to skin cancer and wrinkles. “I wear sunscreen on my neck and face while I go tanning.”
Anderson said she dislikes the smell after using a tanning bed because it “smells like burnt flesh.”
Tanning beds expose a person to UV light, stimulating melanocytes (pigment cells), creating the tanning of the skin, and putting people at risk for skin cancer or cataracts in the eyes.
For those who really can’t live with pasty legs and want a tan, Homer said she suggests sunless tanning products. These products contain a chemical called dihydroxyacetone. It interacts with skin proteins producing an orange color that doesn’t wash off. People who use sunless tanners should use it with additional sunscreen because it alone does not have enough SPF to protect skin from UV rays, Homer said.
Anderson said she has never used bottled self-tanners because of its reputation of looking artificial.
“If I had more money I would rather get the more expensive spray-on tan,” she said.
Spray-on tans are offered at salons. Individuals enter a booth that evenly mists the skin with a sunless tanning substance.
A person’s skin that has been applied with sun block or sunscreen will absorb, reflect or scatter UV rays. Sunscreens come with a SPF (sun protection factor). The number gives the amount of protection times the minutes a person would normally take to burn after exposure to the sun without sunscreen. A fair-skinned person wearing sunscreen with SPF 15 would be protected from sunburn for 1 hour 50 minutes if he usually takes 10 minutes to burn in the sun without using sunscreen. Thus a greater SPF number gives a greater protection from sunburn.
A person’s risk of skin cancer depends on the amount of damage done to the skin through someone’s lifetime exposure to UV rays, intensity of the radiation and predominant type of UV light (UVA or UVB) being exposed to the skin, according to MayoClinic.com.
An article by the Vanderbilt University Medical Center described the United States as having more than one million people who use a tanning bed on an average day, and said those who will have seven times a greater risk of melanoma skin cancer.
For the year 2003, melanoma skin cancer accounted for about 54,200 cases of skin cancer and most (about 7,600) of the 9,800 deaths are due to skin cancer each year, according to the American Cancer Society.
Cancers associated with sun exposure are basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma and malignant melanoma.
Basal cell carcinoma starts out looking like a red patchy or shiny bump. Its color shades are red pink or white. It sometimes only heals temporarily, looking like a crusty open sore. Squamous cell carcinoma appears scaly or raised like the growth of wart. Early detection of basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma would give it an easy treatment and cure.
If you spot a mole-like growth with irregular edges it may be malignant melanoma, the most fatal form of skin cancer. Its appearance is usually multicolored with shades of red, blue or white.
Characteristics and warning signs of malignant melanoma can be recognized with the ABCD acronym. Detecting a dysplastic nevi or precancerous mole can be done by looking for: ‘A’ an Asymmetrical shape, ‘B’ an undefined Border, ‘C’ multiColored growth and ‘D’ moles or lesions with a greater than 6 millimeters in Diameter (the size of pencil eraser).
-doantn@cc.usu.edu