My gym membership includes an option to use their tanning beds. But, due to some quirk (they said it was a law; I didn’t bother to check), you can only use it for like 9 minutes at a time. I haven’t tried it, but was thinking that a tan would improve my appearance.
So, what if a person decides to sit under a UV radiation lamp for 9 minutes a week. Are there any health benefits?
Sunlight provides Vitamin D. That much I know. And I presume it increases melanin production, but I’m not sure if that is considered beneficial. Anything else? Or is it simply that the dangers outweigh the risks, and there’s no good reason to use one of these things?
Vitamin D is produced only by UVB, and tanning beds only make UVA as far as I know. So that’s not a health benefit.
UVA effectively kills bacteria, but arguably “killing bacteria” in and of itself is not a health benefit, especially when the thing doing the killing also gives you cancer.
Looking “healthy” before a big, important presentation is one cosmetic use I know of.
Now, ultraviolet-light therapy
is a subtype of phototherapy that is supposed to give relief from skin conditions like psoriasis, atopic skin disorder, vitiligo, and other skin diseases. However, the wrong wavelength (UVA vs UVB), or too much, can increase one’s risk of skin cancer, so I suppose it would be in your interest to find out exactly what those gym tanning beds radiate.
The benefits of tanning beds are financial - for the people who market them, and also for dermatologists, though they’d rather not make money that way.
*Joe Mercola made a fortune promoting benefits of his tanning beds, but had to refund much of it.
I think you should have had a different title: “how dangerous are tanning beds?” From Jackmannii’s reference:
Indoor tanning can increase the risk of developing the two most common types of skin cancer — squamous cell carcinoma by 58% and basal cell carcinoma by 24%. Using tanning beds before age 20 can increase your chances of developing melanoma by 47%, and the risk increases with each use.
Is there any benefit to using one to ‘pre-tan’ so you don’t get burned on a beach vacation?
I’ve never used one & don’t do beach vacations, either. Lying on a beach baking is torture, not something one does for fun, IMO. Give me a shady hammock in the mountains iffn I gotta just lie around.
I have atopic dermatitis, not too severe most of the time but constant little outbreaks and itching. I have used four or five different types of tanning stations (the most recent one was standing up, which I prefer, it also only required about 8 minutes per session, maybe 3 times a week, to do the job) and my skin has always felt much better by the end of the 2nd session, if it had been a while, and for as long as I kept it up, sometimes months at a time. I don’t get anything recognizable as a tan, just not quite so ghostly pale, and happier. I haven’t done it since Covid, and I am probably going to start up again soon.
I am aware of the dangers of melanoma. The tanning machines all say they use the kind of UV rays to minimize risk, for what that’s worth. To me, the risk is worth the benefit.
That ‘quirk’ is, depending on your jurisdiction, a law or regulation or guideline to reduce (not eliminate) the chance of it giving you cancer. Your gym is not a medical facility, it is a commercial business. Don’t go to them for information on alleged ‘health benefits’ aside from keeping fit. Even then, they are under no obligation to aid your health as such; their prime job is to make money from you. Are they charging extra for this ‘service’?
It is as if they had a ‘smoking room’ where you could have - only one! - cigarette, on the grounds that smoking looks cool. Tanning IS skin damage and CAN lead to skin cancer, Please do not do it.
This article suggests UV exposure might lengthen lives and reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease and some cancers. Would I recommend it? Not yet; at least consider sunscreen and be cautious if you have Type 1 easy-burn skin. But more research may confirm these results.
The risks uv poses are real, but new research suggests it may be time to consider the benefits. According to a study published recently in Health and Place, increased uv exposure appears to make people significantly less likely to die from cardiovascular disease as well as cancer. The risk of dying from melanoma skin cancer, the deadliest form of skin cancer, did not meaningfully change with uv exposure. Although smaller-scale studies have previously nodded at health benefits, this is the largest study to show a direct correlation between uv exposure and longer lifespans.
To conduct their analysis, the researchers from the University of Edinburgh used data from over 360,000 people in the uk Biobank, a database. They identified two cohorts more likely to have high uv exposure: those who claimed to use sunbeds or sunlamps; and those living in sunnier locations. To check that their assumptions about the subjects’ uv exposure were correct, the scientists also looked at vitamin D levels in a subset of blood samples. As vitamin D is synthesised in the skin in the presence of certain forms of uv radiation, it is a reliable indicator of solar exposure.
The researchers then examined the subjects’ death rates while correcting for other confounding factors, including age, sex, smoking and socio-economic status (in Britain, those who live in sunnier climes are typically wealthier). They also corrected for exercise, as some sun-seekers might lead healthier outdoor lives.
Their analysis showed that sunbed-users were 23% less likely to die of cardiovascular disease, and 14% less likely to die of cancer, than non-users. Similar trends held depending on where people lived.
This suggests some benefits to tanning along with the known risks, and it can feel good if you live in a bleak winter country like Canada.
Among its limitations - depending heavily on surveys, no measurements of individual sun exposure (there are allusions to vitamin D levels but it’s unclear if and how those were assayed in the study population), speculative theories about mechanisms of uV benefits for which they have no supporting data (if uV exposure reliably lowers blood pressure as they suggest, assuming that reduction is clinically relevant, where are the corroborative measurements in study subjects?) and confounders they can’t dismiss (they state that people enrolled in UK BioBank aren’t representative of the UK population, but nevermind, they can make causal inferences using the BioBank population anyway ).
And of course, getting sun exposure via outdoor activities and paying visits to tanning bed salons aren’t the same animal.
*I had never heard of the journal Health and Place, in which this study was published. There are some…interesting articles in recent issues, including my favorite, “Hydrophobia, dis/connection, and difference: Understanding Chinese immigrants’ fear of coastal swimming in Aotearoa New Zealand”. We may have to have a separate thread to discuss the implications of that one.
As far as tanning beds go, knowing people might go there to cure butt fungus, I’m going with a GIANT nope.
Not that I’d go anyway being a bit of a transparently whiter shade of pale. Not in my best interest or anyone. If you’re melanin handicapped, use your strong sunscreen and stay out of tanning booths. IMO.
It may be a weak study in a weak journal, from a country with weak sunlight. But it impressed The Economist. I was less impressed, but welcome good news. Accurate good news is even better.
If the sample group is a significant percentage of the population, it probably represents it to some degree. But that doesn’t mean it applies to, say, Canada. It quotes studies saying latitude affects cancer rates, but this ignores the fact skin cancer rates are higher with more UV exposure, especially in countries where protective skin pigmentation is minimal. Melanoma is thirty times more prevalent in paler populations.
Using surveys is problematic. In Canada a solarium is not a tanning bed but a sunroom but I don’t know what it means in the context of this study. Still, if ice cream is good for the soul, I don’t see why sunbathing might not be good for the heart. How UV might be protective against other cancers is also opaque and counterintuitive, and lacking transparency. I am willing to conduct further studies in Fiji and will apply for the funding to do so.
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