Photo: Snooki of Jersey Shore After Visiting A
Tanning Salon
Article by: Dr Zoe Arugay 

Have you heard of this form of skin cancer called melanoma? It's the most aggressive of the skin cancers and recent studies have found that there is an increase in the number of cases of melanoma to 2% in the general population.

Melanoma makes up just about 3% of all skin cancers and results to approximately 8,000 deaths a year, according to the National Cancer Institute. In addition, other factors have doctors concerned: that it has become the most common cancer in the 25-29 age group that normally shows very low cancer rates; and that many of the cases result from the preventable, but addictive, behavior of indoor suntanning.

It is interesting to note that research shows that there is a medical basis for those who say that tanning is addictive. According to Scott Feldman, a professor of dermatology at the Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, when the body produces the hormone that initiates tanning, it also produces a secondary molecule in the endorphin family.

And endorphins are hormones responsible for giving you that feeling of euphoria.

In effect, exposure to UV rays makes tanning bed users high, just like any other addictive substance.

And so like any other addictive substance, I say you should just start saying "no." Besides, aren't you a bit concerned that you might have an unhealthy-looking tan? Worse, long-term exposure can produce wrinkles and age spots.

How did this happen?

Ultraviolet rays from the sun that triggers the skin to develop a tan also damages DNA. When errors in transcription occur in areas of the DNA that regulate cell growth, then skin cancers can develop.

In fact, exposure to the mid-day sun can produce as many as 40,000 DNA errors an hour, said Regina Santella, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health in New York.

The upside to this is that our skin cells can rapidly repair these errors, but repeated errors over time can cause cancer.

Indoor tanning can produce this same effect, too, because they contain they the same ultraviolet radiation. A study at the University of Michigan revealed that frequent tanning bed users proved three times more likely to develop melanoma than non-users, and subjects that used tanning beds for any amount of time showed a 74-percent higher rate of melanoma than non-users. This was published online May 27 in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.

That study did not investigate the percentage of indoor tanners who developed melanoma, rather showed the difference between users and non-users.

Sun Screen

The obvious solution here is to use sun screen when working or frolicking under the sun is unavoidable.

Most sunscreens have protection against UV-B. But when you look closely, they might not protect you against UV-A. Choose a product with protection against both with an SPF of at least 30.