i was wondering if any of you people fake bake??? seems like a good idea for those early or late season races where i’ve lost the tan and don’t want to scare anyone with the whiteness…is it bad for the body?
luke
You know, this is kind of embarassing, but I HAVE to go to the tanning booth. I am so white it is freakish. I go once or twice a week now. Now I look normal. I’m not going to the pool and taking off all my clothes when I am dead-body white. I don’t think it is good for you, but it is a guilty pleasure. I look a lot better since I started going. I am less self concious about taking my clothes of in front of someone too.
This is probably going to come off as harsh so I’ll apologize in advance… a guilty pleasure is eating an extra muffin at breakfast. Tanning yourself in a tanning booth could kill you. I’ll freely admit that I’m hypersensitive to this after having been diagnosed and treated for a malignant melanoma 3 years ago. I was one of the lucky ones that caught it while it was still early- I now have a circular scar the size of a hockey puck on my lower leg where they had to remove all skin and fat down to the muscle and then perform a skin graft to cover the bare exposed muscle. This took nearly 6 months to totally heal. Others are not so lucky. The cure rate if melanoma spreads to the lymph nodes goes from >90% to <50%, and if it spreads to a distant organ it’s less than 25%. Chemo and radiation don’t do anything for melanoma. What’s my point other than to scare you? Nothing- just trying to scare you away from tanning booths. As triathlete’s we get enough sun just working out and racing. Please don’t add to that risk. Again- sorry if this sounds harsh- just trying to look out for my peeps. It’s scary how little most people know about this very nasty form of cancer.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming 
Having had pre-cancers removed from my face, I was fearful of the tanning beds and the resulting skin damage. But I had Lavaman (early April)on the Big Island coming up and I remembered how painful and long-lived tropical burns can be. My training partner is a dermatologist and he suggested that the controlled environment of the tanning salon might be better in the long run than getting a burn outside. He also advised me to cover my face with a towel. So in I went and built up a base tan over a few weeks. I didn’t have to hide from the sun all week in Hawaii and my tan lasted all summer. A word of caution: You may find your tanning sessions addicting.
Thanks, it’s not harsh at all. I appreciate it. I wondered about this. My dad has some kind of skin cancer thing he had to have removed. I can’t honestly say I’ll stop going. I just look so nasty when I don’t. Although, if I got diagnosed with skin cancer I would feel pretty darn stupid.
You would think this makes sense, except a tan doesn’t prevent you from burning. You can burn just as quickly and just as severely being tan as being totally white. Check this out:
http://www.mpip.org/topframeset.shtml?news/02_06_02tanningbeds.html
Tanning Beds, Lamps May Double Cancer Risk-Report
Wed Feb 6, 3:40 PM ET
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tanning beds and tanning lamps may more than double the risk of cancer, and the effect is the worst in the young women most likely to use them, researchers said on Wednesday.
The researchers suggested use of the devices be limited to adults, and anyone who uses a tanning bed perhaps should be required to sign a consent form acknowledging the risks.
The study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, is one of several that strongly link the use of tanning lamps with skin cancer.
Dermatologists are not surprised by this – in order for the skin to tan it has to be damaged. Tanning is the skin’s response to the ultraviolet rays given off by the sun and tanning lamps and beds.
“Tanning is a response to injury,” Dr. Steven Spencer, a Dartmouth medical school dermatologist who worked on the study, said in a telephone interview. Sunlight also causes wrinkles, age spots and thinning skin, as do sunlamps, he said.
In the United States, more than a million people develop two types of skin cancer, known as basal cell and squamous cell carcinoma, every year. Both are easily cured if caught early.
Spencer, Margaret Karagas and colleagues interviewed 603 people who had just been diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma and 293 with squamous cell carcinoma.
They also spoke to 540 people who did not have skin cancer. Everyone they spoke with was between 25 and 74 years old and lived in New Hampshire.
All of the nearly 1,500 volunteers were asked how often they sunbathed, whether they had ever had a sunburn, if they smoked or ever had radiation treatment and whether they used tanning lamps.
HIGHER RATES SHOWN
Those who said they had used a tanning lamp or sunbed were 2.5 times as likely to be in the squamous cell carcinoma group, and 1.5 times more likely to be in the basal cell carcinoma group, as those who said they had never used the devices, the Dartmouth team found.
“Our findings suggest that the use of tanning devices may contribute to the incidence of nonmelanoma skin cancers,” researchers wrote.
Spencer said there were not enough people in the group to check for melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer, but he said it is likely tanning beds increase the risk of melanoma.
His team considered the possibility that people who used tanning beds may have sunbathed as well, thus raising their risk of skin cancer from the sun. So they accounted for sunbathing in the report.
But, they said, “no other factors, including summer outdoor exposure, sunbathing or sunburns, affected our results.”
The very people who are warned to stay out of the sun were the ones most likely to use the tanning devices – fair-skinned women who burned easily but who sunbathed anyway.
Spencer said those young women may mistakenly believe they are “laying down a base” that will protect them from the sun.
“The problem is that the kind of tan that a fair-skinned person gets is not very protective,” he said.
As with sun exposure, the risk of cancer built over time. Those most likely to have developed skin cancer had first used the tanning devices decades earlier.
“Most tanning parlors use a certain wavelength of ultraviolet light called UVA that doesn’t tend to burn you so much but it is harmful,” Spencer said.
Researchers said tanning salons and sun lamps might need closer regulation – now determined by states – and suggested that minors be banned from using them.
We get too much UV exposure as it is. I am not sure why anyone would want to increase the amount by going to a tanning salon.
Some points:
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The sun is brutal and as other have pointed out skin cancer can be deadly
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Use a good SPF ALL the time while out in the sun. I have found early season races a challenge, with winter white skin, but 2/3 of a sun screens effectiveness is related to it’s application. Shower with soap and water, then slather on SPF 15+ all exposed skin. wait 15 minutes and then apply sunscreen again. If it’s a good waterproof/sport product this should last 4 - 6 hours.
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The sun really does age people prematurely. I hate to be critical, but have a look at some of the older men, but mostly women who have been in the sport for a long time and live in year-round sunny areas - great bodies, but their faces and their skin looks a decade or more older than they really are.
Twenty years ago my ex and I were sun worshippers. As I hated farmer tan lines, a lot of time was spent under the sun getting a good even tan. We used to only go to the tanning booth just before a Caribbean holiday to get a base start. Nowadays, with all the hype about skin cancer, I’d be much more careful.
Haven’t you seen Queer Eye for the Straight Guy? You are supposed to spray the tan on these days…
No, I don’t tan because I am perfectly happy with the color of my skin the way it is, and I don’t go out without sunscreen on. My grandmother’s younger sister was and is a sun worshipper, but now her skin looks like leather and she looks at least 15 years older than my grandmother. The dangers of long term exposure to UV radiation are well known, unless you buy into Phil Maffetone’s wacky ideas on sun exposure.
Does anyone see the irony here; we live in a country where some white people consider themselves superior to non whites yet are obsessed with making their skin darker?
Actually, I miss the irony, but that is probably because I live in America. I don’t know that I have met any of those “some white people,” though I imagine they are present in every country along with murderers, rapists, sociopaths and the like. Fortunately they are rare, easy to avoid, and society manages to ignore them.
Tanning booths and sprays, whats that stuff? I’m still suffering through 100 degree days (cooling trend this week low 90’s!), slathering the sunblock on before I go workout and I’m still rather tan. Skip the booth, save you money from the sprays move to the desert!
jkat, thanks for posting this. I’d been discussing with some friends about the harmful side effects of tanning and they didn’t believe me. Maybe I’ll print this off and show them.
This article also brings up another good point. When you walk by a tanning parlor what are most likely to see? A lot of girls (between the ages of fourteen and thirty.) I’ve heard several places, this is about the worst group you can get in terms of cancer developing. I think tanning booths are this next generations cigarettes.
And as far as farmer tans, I very much prefer them. It shows, “hey I was out in the sun working and got a little tan.” I find it a lot less vain, and a lot more attractive.
Family history is a major risk factor in skin cancer so you are already behind the 8 ball. And forget SPF 15 - use SPF 45 or better and make sure it has titanium dioxide or other IR/visible light blocker too.
Although you would assume so, to date there has been no large/reliable study showing sunscreen even works to lower cancer incidence in humans, and recent research has shown current sunblocks don’t block UV-A very well either so avoidance is still the best policy.
If you are embarassed by being ultra white shark bait do a tan in a can.
So Tom, all you have to do is find a health provider who’ll let you claim for sun treatment and it would make health insurance worthwhile !
Having had hairy legs since the age of three I regularly shaved them for the first time this year and Hey Presto !! Brown Legs !! Admiring glances too. Even from women! (Alright, I guess they could have just been staring).
No more “2 big white (and one small pink) hairy sausages for me” .