Learn More

 

Why Is Indoor Tanning “Smart Tanning?”

Indoor tanning, if you can develop a tan, is an intelligent way to minimize the risk of sunburn while maximizing the enjoyment and benefit of having a tan. We call this SMART TANNING because tanners are taught by trained tanning facility personnel how their skin type reacts to sunlight and how to avoid sunburn outdoors, as well as in a salon.

Tanning in a professional facility today minimizes risk because the government regulates indoor tanning in the United States and Canada. In the United States, exposure times for every tanning session are established by a schedule present on every piece of equipment that takes into account the tanner's skin type and the intensity of the equipment to deliver a dosage of sunlight designed to minimize the risk of sunburn. The schedule, as regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Health Canada, also takes into account how long an individual has been tanning, increasing exposure times gradually to minimize the possibility of burning.

 

 

 

Indoor Tanning: Smart Tan

An estimated 30 million North Americans turn to tanning salons as a controlled alternative to outdoor tanning. As we become increasingly aware of the benefits associated with regular exposure to sunlight and of the importance of managing the risks that can be associated with sunburn and overexposure, more people are turning to indoor tanning facilities to help attain their tans in a controlled environment
Read Entire Article

 

 

Women need place in the sun in
the battle of breast cancer risk
By Nigel Hawkes
Saturday August 04 2007

WOMEN who stay out of the sun are increasing their risk of developing breast cancer, a new study suggests. The safe tanning messages that are drummed into women every year may help to reduce their risk of skin cancer - but at the cost of increasing their risk of breast cancer.
The study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, shows that the lower the levels of Vitamin D in a woman's bloodstream, the greater the risk of her developing breast cancer if she has passed the menopause. Most Vitamin D comes from the exposure of the skin to sunlight but, in this trial, it was provided in the form of vitamin supplements. A team from Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, enrolled 1,179 women all 55 or older, who had no history of cancer. The women were randomly divided into groups and given either supplements of calcium alone, calcium plus Vitamin D, or a placebo for four years.

Osteoporosis

The researchers were principally interested in the risk of the women suffering from osteoporosis, but they also looked at cancer risks since observational studies have strongly suggested that breast cancer is less common among women who live closer to the Equator, where the sunshine is stronger.
The team found that women who received both calcium and Vitamin D supplements had less than half the chance of developing breast cancer than those given a placebo (13 cases among 446 women compared with 20 cases among 288 women).
Calcium alone also had a protective effect against cancer, but it was not so strong.
When the researchers repeated the analysis for those women who were free of cancer after the first year of the study, the results were even more striking. In this second analysis, the risks were reduced by more than three quarters.

"These findings highlight the importance of promoting optimum Vitamin D status and underscore the value of achieving and maintaining a high serum 25(OH)D concentration," the researchers said.

Source

 

Researchers Test Vitamin D Production From Tanning Beds

After finding that vitamin D deficiency was common among elderly people during non-summer days, researchers at the University of Boston decided to see if exposure to UV rays from a commercial tanning bed could effectively stimulate production of this essential vitamin.

The first part of the study, led by Michael Holick, M.D., focused on 45 nursing home residents whose rate of 25(OH)D deficiency raised to 49 percent in August, 67 percent in November, 74 percent in February and 78 percent in May—despite the fact that participants took a vitamin D supplement containing 400 IU of vitamin D2 during the study.

For the second portion of the study, Holick and colleagues exposed 15 healthy adults aged 20 to 53 to UV rays from a commercial tanning bed three times per week for seven weeks and determined their 25(OH)D level on a weekly basis. The tanning bed emitted 5 percent of its UV energy in the UVB range 290 nm to 320 nm. Results from the study showed that exposure to tanning bed irradiation increased pre-vitamin D at a linear rate of 1 percent per minute. One week of exposure led to an increase in 25(OH)D by 50 percent, and five weeks of exposure increased the level by 150 percent. During the last two weeks, 25(OH)D leveled off.

“Vitamin D deficiency is common in both children and adults worldwide,” Holick says. "Exposure to lamps that emit UVB radiation is an excellent way to produce vitamin D3 in the skin and is especially efficacious in patients with fat malabsorption syndromes.”

The current recommended daily allowance for vitamin D is 400 IU for adults, which many experts now believe is too low. According to the researchers, those experts would recommend 1,000 IU per day as the minimum daily intake.

The study was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health and the Ultraviolet Light Foundation and will be published in the March 2008 issue of the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research .