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Tanning – Not a good idea
This website has very good information about cosmetics. In depth and well researched reviews.
With summer coming on I thought you all might be interested in the following article on tanning. There is more info on sunscreens on her website.
http://www.cosmeticscop.com
Amandahttp://www.cosmeticscop.com/bulletin/100407-full.htm#3
Tanning Temptation – The Dark Side of the Cosmetics Industry
The cosmetics industry has a split personality when it comes to the health of your skin. On one hand, they want you to believe they care a great deal about healthy skin, offering products they claim will give you wrinkle-free, smooth, ageless skin. Sadly, there are still lots of companies selling products that are little more than cigarettes for your skin. Specifically I’m thinking of products that encourage you to get a tan from the sun and convince you that you can do it quickly, and that somehow getting a tan faster is safer than getting a tan slowly. It’s as if smoking a pack of cigarettes in two days versus two hours would be healthier, when it’s unhealthy no matter how you time it. Either way, this is all bad news for skin. Let me reiterate what I’ve said over and over again: There is no such thing as a safe tan from UV radiation, whether from the sun or tanning beds (in Europe they are called solariums). It is also disingenuous to sell products claiming to repair the effects of sun damage or to reduce wrinkling while also selling products that cause the damage. I’m referring to sunscreens with woefully low SPF numbers (such as those from Coppertone, Bain de Soleil, Banana Boat, and Hawaiian Tropic, to name a few). This includes all sunscreens with no UVA-protecting ingredients, expensive sunscreens that guarantee you won’t apply them liberally, and suntan accelerating pills.In fact, one type of suntan accelerator that often shows up on Web searches is based on bergapten (5-methoxypsoralen), which is found in bergamot oil. As natural as that may sound, it is also a well-known phototoxic substance. Bergapten increases the skin’s sensitivity to ultraviolet light and it intensifies redness and swelling, which triggers skin cells to produce melanin. It has also been reported to be a carcinogenic in animals (Source: http://www.fda.gov). Trying to get a better tan has serious repercussions, both in the short term and the long term!
These tanning accelerators (also called enhancers or maximizers) are often sold as nutritional supplementsâ€â€as if the healthier you are is what determines how healthy or dark a tan you will achieve. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is nothing healthy about a tan and there are only two factors that affect how you get a tan: genetics (how much melanin your skin is able to produce) and how much exposure to UV radiation you get. There is no known supplement, food, vitamin, herb, plant, or combination of plants that can stimulate melanin production. (Don’t be confused by information on the Internet about a substance called melanotan, a synthetic hormone that mimics the action of melanocyte stimulating hormone (MSH), which is part of the body’s chemical process for creating melanin. Melanotan only works when injected into skin, not when taken orally, and it has not yet been approved by the FDA.)
In terms of “tanning pills,†they come in three varieties. Those that contain carotenoid pigments (EluSun), those that contain tyrosine (Mayan Secrets), and those that contain practically nothing at all to effect skin color (Deep Tan). Each of these affect the skin in completely different ways, with the last one, Deep Tan, having no effect whatsoever except to waste money (and possibly become ill from the some of the plant extracts used).
Some pills contain an excessive amount of carotenoidsâ€â€the same substances that make carrots orange and salmon a pinkish-orange color in the form of beta carotene, lycopene, and the pigment canthaxanthin. When carotenoids are taken in large amounts, the body cannot use or excrete them, and they become saturated in the fat layers of the skin, with the result that the skin appears to be a different color. The FDA has stated that taking carotenoids in the amount necessary to create a “tan-like” appearance is dangerous, and pills for this purpose have been banned for sale in the U.S. But they are still easy to purchase via the Internet, and are available in countries outside of the U.S. Aside from the fact that this coloration can actually look oddly orange and offers no protection from the sun, a far more serious concern is that excess pigment gets deposited and stored in the retina of the eye and this can permanently harm vision.
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2 Replies
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I’ve been using a olay moisturiser UV protector on my face recently and I feel that it is helping, it has stopped my nose from getting as red and looking paper thin and gross. I am skeptical of sun lotions as much as the next person so I usually avoid them all together (except this one product that my mother gave me).
I have been trying to get a tan recently and all I’ve been putting on is a basic moisturiser.. and only staying in the sun for approx 20mins at a time between the hours of sunrise – 10am and after 6pm.
But yeah some of the claims that make up products make are just laughable!! -
I use Olay moisturiser each morning and since i drive an open car, I use a 30+ sun screen. I have all the wrinkles and sun spots I need and with my pommy skin have no desire to be tanned.
I also don’t want to get any skin cancers
June
