Can tanning really make you healthy? Or is it deadly threatening?
Today there circulate two absolutely opposite viewpoints about tanning:
1. Tanning is threatening
2. Tanning is healthy because it will give you Vitamin D
The fact is that both viewpoints are right but the 2nd is much more right than the 1st.
Nonetheless, like with almost all good and healthy treats, having too much can have negative side effects and make them bad.
To determine the correct amount you can safely take of a food-supplement or drugs are troublesome as it varies from individual to individual dependent on many various individual circumstances. To regulate your tanning is easier; the most significant factor is to be completely certain to stay well clear from burning your skin.
That's also one of the explanations why tanning is the chosen way to raise your level of Vitamin D. Tanning is also the sole natural way for your body to soak up Vitamin D. If Vitamin D was meant to take by swallowing it, Vitamin D would have been present in a mother’s milk. Since all the other nourishment needed for a newly born are present in a mother’s milk, except Vitamin D, it gives us a hint of how nature would like us to get it in another way, namely by tanning.
During the last 5 years, modern medical treatments has confirmed what our ancestors always knew “sunshine and tanning are necessary for human life. Modern science has additionally identified Vitamin D as one of the hormones responsible for the recovery process that's trigged by sunlight. Exposing your naked skin to UVB rays (270 “315/320 nanometers wavelength with the Vitamin D creation topping at 297 nm), is the most natural and safest way for your body to start its own production of Vitamin D. It isn't required and likely not safe, to take Vitamin D as food supplement or to drink gigantic amounts of fortified milk. Tanning is the most practical solution to get Vitamin D.
So now maybe you are convinced to get healthy by raising your Vitamin D level by tanning, now you have to find the all important UVB-rays. If it is summer or perhaps if you live close to the equator, this may be easy. During the remainder of the year, it is tougher and the further from the equator you are , the more problematic it is to find UVB in nature. The sun has to be at an angle of 50 degrees above the horizon for the UVB rays to reach the earth and the sky must be clear and free from pollution.
The Vitamin D you managed to get by tanning in the correct way during the summer will disappear at the same pace as your skin loses its tanned colour. My personal experience is that it takes about 6 weeks without tanning for my level of Vitamin D to go from really high to insufficient.
There's also a method to keep healthy in the “flu-season”, by going to a tanning salon. The tanning lamp radiating UVB (most often together with UVA), is probably the most vital health-improving invention in the last 50 years. It is an invention well worth a Nobel Prize.
Unfortunately and for reasons described in several other articles and posts on my blog, indoor tanning has become the key target for the “sun-scare” lobby. 1 or 2 person’s obsession to get as dark as practical by abusing the means of indoor tanning, is motivating an aggressive anti-tanning campaign. The reality is nevertheless , that regular and moderate indoor tanning is probably the right way to stay healthy during the time when UVB can't be found in nature.
A regular tanning regime is good for your health , but you've got to help your skin to remain smooth and healthy for the tanning sessions to work. Using dedicated tanning lotions (without SPF) of top quality, preferably based mostly on Aloe Vera, will keep your skin young and smooth while tanning sparsely.
To learn how to tan properly in order to avoid Vitamin D deficiency, is probably one of the most important call you can make for improving your health. In his Blog, Goran, TheTanningGuru, describes the method of tanning for health in a simple way that's easy to follow. There you'll also see why tanning, under the natural sun as well in a tanning bed, has got a bad reputation and who are behind the anti tanning propaganda.
categories: tanning,vitamin d,uvb,healthy tanning,skin cancer