Our skin cells are designed to manufacture Vitamin D when exposed to UVB rays from sunlight. It actually doesn't take much time, as little as ten minutes exposure without sunscreen for a fair skinned person. I found this interesting article from about seven years ago. As with most warnings, it appears possible the concept of any amount of sunlight being bad for us was exaggerated. It reminds me of when fat, all fat, was considered deadly.

"Do you think the United States and other western countries have gone too far in promoting protection from the sun?

Possibly. Sun protection messages arose in response to rapidly increasing rates of skin cancers, and they were an essential public-health message. But we now recognize that some sun exposure is important for health, at the very least, to maintain healthful vitamin D levels. (Sunscreen blocks out nearly all UV radiation.) Taking this into account, the Cancer Council of Australia has eased its sun protection message a little over the last few years and now recommends that if you're out in the sun for relatively short periods, with a UV index less than 3, which indicates a moderate amount of UV rays hitting your area on a given day, then sunscreen and other sun protection (like hats and protective clothing) are not required. Beyond this, I believe we all need a little unprotected time in the sun during the middle hours of the day when the sun is at its highest and UV-B rays can penetrate the atmosphere."

@JASFLALMT wrote:

Oh, but I would so much rather eat sugar than that fake stuff!!!! It all tastes really weird. I think everything in moderation. I never liked fat free stuff, anyway, and I think it just depends on the types of fat. I love avocados and olive oil, but I also like butter, and too much animal sourced fat is bad. I never liked margarine Come to find out it's not good for you, either. I love fruit and vegetables, I eat blueberries and yogurt several times a week, bananas as a snack, and we eat asparagus alot as a side dish for whatever we are having. Also, my MIL grew romaine lettuce in her garden this year and we have a great farmer's market down the road where we get fresh produce. Not like California where you guys can get fresh veggies year round, like those huge artichokes for .25 cents we pay $1.50 each for. But we do have great prices on cherries, apples, and blueberries because it's a better climate up here for them. And now we have taken over Brian's thread, LOL.

a good way of life and i can see that my soapbox has been hijacked and i have no problem with that.

just got another msg (5 minutes ago) pleading for someone/anyone to do the tanning thing. if it gets into the mid three range i might swallow what little pride i have and do it. if i do i'll never admit to it, btw.

Yeah, I imagine you could do a really, really short tanning session, or you could get sprayed orange like El Presidente (no, I am not being political and not starting anything). Oh, but my other concern about tanning beds is this: how clean are those tanning beds, anyway? I know that they are SUPPOSED to wipe them out properly in between customers, but can you count on some minimum wage employee doing their job properly? And what if someone who was in there before you had MRSA or something that didn't get killed by the antimicrobial spray? All it would take was one little nick in your skin for some opportunistic pathogen to find it's way inside of your body. Ugh. Oh, also wanted to add that my previous hairdresser confessed that when they had a tanning bed at their salon, they had picked up someone at a bar one night and went back to the salon after hours for some fun...in the tanning bed. Double ugh.

@FrugalCat wrote:

But every winter, my Seasonal Affected Disorder kicks in and going to a tanning bed really helps alleviate it.

Have you tried switching out those horrible CFL lightbulbs with full spectrum ones? I have a friend with SAD who swears by them. Those, and melatonin tabs.

update...just got this a few minutes ago from one desperate scheduler who is begging/pleading for someone with a death wish...

"Looking To Maintain Your Summer Glow? Spray Tan Or Bed Tan At Popular Tanning Salon! We'll Pay For IT!"

i tried on many platforms to use a "strikethrough" on the above but i've been stymied/thwarted so here is my fix...

Q: "LOOKING TO MAINTAIN YOUR SUMMER GLOW?"
A: "THE GLOW FROM THE RADIATION TREATMENTS YOU'RE GONNA NEED FADES AFTER ABOUT
SIX/EIGHT MONTHS.

Q: "SPRAY TAN OR BED TAN AT POPULAR TANNING SALON?"
A: "PICK YOUR POISON. CHEMICALS BEING ABSORBED THROUGH THE SKIN OR...Exposure to UV
radiation—whether from the sun or from artificial sources such as sunlamps used in tanning beds—increases
the risk of developing skin cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI)".

and finally (wait for it)...

"WE'LL PAY FOR IT ALONG WITH A FULLY-REIMBURSED PROSTHETIC NOSE CUZ YOU'RE NOSE IS GONNA FALL OFF FROM THE RADIATION YOU'LL NEED. THE WIG YOU'LL NEED CUZ THE RADIATION WILL CAUSE EVERY STRAND OF BODY HAIR TO FALL OFF IS ALSO NON-REIMBURSABLE. BUT, ON THE UPSIDE, WEIGHT LOSS MIGHT BE A BLESSING FOR SOME FOLKS? THE COFFIN THAT YOU'RE GONNA NEED WILL NOT, REPEAT WILL NOT BE REIMBURSED. THE CC (COFFIN COST) MIGHT BE TAX DEDUCTIBLE I SUGGEST DISCUSSING THIS WITH A TAX PROFESSIONAL.



there, scheduler, i fixed it for you.

Usually there's just a big hole stitched up from where they had to carve the growth out of your skin. Probably no radiation unless you had metastasized melanoma.

@JASFLALMT wrote:

Usually there's just a big hole stitched up from where they had to carve the growth out of your skin. Probably no radiation unless you had metastasized melanoma.

hey, thx for the clarification. now this assignment looks a little better and if the fee goes up another $5 i'm going to jump on it.

To make the shops more appealing, they should throw in some free cigarettes. With asbestos filters, of course.

i'm anxiously awaiting with bated breath for the "oh, just a little or two/a little bit/every now-and-then won't hurt" folks to weigh in.
as well as those who do have my personal e-mail with the jokes, etc.

bring it on !!!!!

"Ah, well, who wants to live forever?"
— Prince Vultan, Flash Gordon

Lisa is right about sun and Vitamin D and the cascade of potentially beneficial effects of that vitamin. Supplemental Vitamin D is good if you cannot get enough sunlight.

But how can we can enough sunlight safely? And, if we get sunlight through our eyes for health benefits we also may incur a cataract risk over time. (But we will focus on the skin for now.)

Depending upon how old we are and what has happened with our skin, we may need to be especially careful. When I was a kid, we did not know about sunscreen. We did not live in the days of parasols. We just fried. Right out there, off yonder under the sun, like snakes and eggs on the hot desert sand.

Because of early sunburns, I have a skin cancer risk. I have offsets for that risk. Nutrition, etc. are helpful. Someone said that my wacky sense of humor should be studied as a possible offset for anything or everything under the sun. If it is true that a merry heart doeth good like a medicine, then I should patent myself and feed myself to myself daily. But seriously, so far all is well with my skin.

We all should be aware of our risks. For us, do potential risks outweigh potential benefits?

Keep in mind, the studies I saw said as little as ten minutes a day was sufficient. And nothing I read suggested exposing eyes. It is the skin converting sunshine to vitamin D.

Family history of cancer here. I had thyroid cancer last year and had my thyroid removed. I stopped going to tanning beds over 15 years ago, but even now I'm still scared I risked too much.
I did pick up to so a shop tomorrow. But for the spray tan. It's kind of a treat to myself every now and then since it gives me a nice color to my Casper like skin.
Most people don't think about the consequences until cancer hits them or someone they love.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/15/2017 05:40AM by pfaffkim2.

@LisaSTL wrote:

Keep in mind, the studies I saw said as little as ten minutes a day was sufficient. And nothing I read suggested exposing eyes. It is the skin converting sunshine to vitamin D.

Technically, even a few minutes of exposure will alter the skin. Even a slow acquisition via a few minutes of unprotected exposure damages the skin. For most people, a tan appears slowly instead of a reddening or burning. But these tans are skin damage, technically. The skin damage is what leads to premature aging, which is yet another factor in skin cancer risks.

(I merely mentioned that the glorious sun which is part of the Creation which I love provides yet another potential health risk for some persons. How many people with incipient or advancing cataracts also have a risk for skin cancer? Do these even occur in the same persons? What is their inborn predisposition or resistance for either condition? What is their lifestyle modulation? This is for me to look up some time when I have absolutely nothing better to do than a human health/sun risk meta.)

[oncosec.com]
"The average tanning bed produces approximately the same amount of UBV light as the sun and upwards of three times the amount of UVA light (source: Harvard Medical School). However, this is compounded by the fact that indoor tanning is in concentrated bursts. This causes faster mutations in the body, as the ultraviolet light changes the configuration of human DNA. While neither method of tanning is safe (as both permanently increase your cancer risk), the use of tanning beds and concentrated delivery of UV light are much more dangerous."

For many people it presents as simple basal cell carcinoma, which is very slow growing and doesn't metastasize to other organs. I grew up in Florida, slathered my skin in baby oil and baked in the sun on the beach, and also worked outside a lot because I had horses. I have remarkably good skin somehow, must be good food and good genes. That being said, I did have a basal cell carcinoma about eight years ago that I had to have removed (hence knowing firsthand about the hole carved in flesh that has to be stitched up). The scar isn't too bad, though. But I never for a moment considered tanning beds for soooo many reasons, most of all from my experience as a massage therapist and that of just instinctively knowing it couldn't be good for a person. I saw more than one form of skin cancer while in that profession and also studied about the dangers of tanning beds, even though not as much was known about them then as now.

I met a man at a dinner party hosted by a friend. He was in his early 30s and was a single father of a 4-year-old boy. His wife had died about a year previously. She had a black mole on her abdomen that she ignored. Turned out it was melanoma. It had spread to her other organs and it was too late by the time she had it looked at. They hadn't paid much attention to it because she was only 27 and had never spent much time in the sun, how in the world could she have gotten melanoma so young without a lot of sun exposure? I didn't even ask about tanning beds. I guess some people might be predisposed to getting cancer at an early age.

I made the mistake of getting talked into a spray tan ONCE. I was a peachy orange clay color for a week before it scrubbed off into a tolerable sand color and people started complimenting the color instead of asking what the heck I did to myself -_- You can't go from porcelain to tawny.