Skin care
8 Bad Skin Habits That'll Shock You
Skin care
9 Secrets Tanning Salons Don't Want You to Know
Indoor tanning can cost you your healthy skin and your life, so how are these salons staying in business? Find out
Tanning indoors is more dangerous than tanning outdoors
One of the most common spiels you'll hear at the tanning salon is that if you're going to tan, it's "smarter" to do so in a bed as opposed to outdoors. Tanning salon employees like Heather Carrillo, who worked at a salon for a year and a half, say they are taught in their "Smart-Tan Certification" to "never say indoor tanning is 'safe' [but] to say it is 'smart.' Obviously getting a tan is not safe, so the selling point is that in a bed you can monitor the exact amount of exposure as opposed to tanning outside where the UV percentages change every day."So is this true? Is tanning indoors smarter that outdoors due to the "controlled environment" of a bed? David E. Bank, MD, a dermatologist and educational spokesperson for The Skin Cancer Foundation, says no. In fact, he maintains that it's quite the opposite -- tanning indoors is actually more dangerous to the health of your skin because "you're getting a much higher concentration of the longer wavelength UVA, which damages more deeply into the skin" than being out in the sun. And research backs him up. "Frequent tanners using new, high-pressure sunlamps may receive as much as 12 times the annual UVA dose compared to the dose they receive from sun exposure" and are "74 percent more likely to develop melanoma than those who have never tanned indoors," says The Skin Cancer Foundation.
SEE NEXT PAGE: "Tanorexia" is a real disease
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