Over the years I have heard from countless sources that tanning (indoor especially) is incredibly dangerous. I know that it increases your risk of skin cancers and other skin damage, early aging, etc but I am having trouble explaining to my partner the severity of the damage. I am bad with words. Can someone please eli5 the reality of it so I can get him to stop tanning? Thank you!
In: Chemistry
The best demonstration of the effects I can think of is if you do an image search for “truck driver face”
The damage it does to cells is basically the same as radiation poisoning, but most of it gets absorbed by the skin. UVA(from tanning beds) penetrates more deeply into the skin than UVB.
Maybe an alternate approach could help you convince him. Going outside on even a cloudy day without sunscreen for a surprisingly short amount of time (like less than 30 mins) can expose your skin to enough damaging UV rays to increase your chances of skin cancer ever so slightly. You can be getting damage even without any visible darkening or burning of skin.
Now imagine purposefully tanning and exposing large areas of your skin to UV rays (whether via sun or tanning bed) for a significant amount of time. That just increases the chances even more.
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70,000 people in the US each year get skin cancer (melanoma). And 8000 people die from skin cancer each year.
Each time you use a tanning bed, you are damaging your DNA, which increases your risk for skin cancer. Three out of every four people who have skin cancer have used tanning beds. And every time you use a tanning bed, you have a 2 percent higher chance of getting skin cancer.
Tanning is a protective response to DNA damage. Although your cells try to fix the damage, it’s not perfect. There are other safer ways of getting a darker skin tone.
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Tanning itself is the body’s way of protecting its skin. Your body produces melanin because it’s being bombarded with UV rays.
When the UV rays hit your skin, it damages the DNA in your skin. It also compromises your immune system. These two things are what cause cancer.
Anecdotally, I have a friend who used to love tanning. She even had her own tanning bed in her garage. We would always tell her to stop that because it was so bad for her.
Eventually she did stop. Maybe 15 years later, she had pain in her sternum. Turned out to be skin cancer that had spread. She had surgery and chemo.
But it was too late. It had spread to her brain. She’s had several brain surgeries over the last few years and has to have scans every 90 days to try to catch it early when it comes back.
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