Are Tanning Beds Safe?

By Super Admin

Tuesday, July 12, 2011, 14:57

While in India, we try to protect ourselves from tanning and dark skin, people from the West like from United States, UK, Canada etc, go for tanning to get the golden complexion. This is one of the main reasons why, Indian beach destinations is a major tourist attraction for the Western crowd. For those, who cannot come to Indian beaches, choose the artificial form of tanning called the tanning beds.

It use 10-50 lamps which uses 100-200 watts of electricity to provide artificial tanning. It mimics the Sun UVA and UVB rays to result in the artificial tanning. The UVA rays penetrate deep into the skin, resulting in stimulating the production of melanin. UVB rays on the other hand penetrates only on the top layer of the skin. Both these rays are equally used, to result in a beautiful golden tan. Tanning beds, however, have side effects which have been proved after several researches.

1.Malignant Melanoma – This is the most common type of skin cancer. This type of skin cancer happens on the skin cells, which gives rise to pigmentation. In United States more than 80% case of skin cancer has resulted as a side effect of tanning beds.

2.Aging – One of the major side effects of tanning beds is premature aging. The high concentration of rays destruct the skin tissues, making them loose. This leads to early appearance of wrinkles and sagging skin.

4.Eye Damage – Researches have proved that one of the side effects of tanning beds is eye damage. The harsh rays damage the retina and cornea of the eyes. In more sever cases it might lead to blindness or weak eye sight. One of the prevalent side effect of tanning beds is early formation of cataracts.

5.Medicinal Effects – According to few doctors, this form of artificial tanning might effect the reaction of other medicines in the body. If you are under a certain type of medication and use this artificial form of tanning, then it's possible that you might face some skin reactions. That is because the tanning procedure effect the working of the medicine.

Thus, it dermatologists prefer natural sun tanning when compared to use of artificial tanning procedure.