Tanning Beds Guideline
Tanning Bed Tips
What is Tanning?
If you spend too much time out in the sun, you will notice your skin darkening. This is tanning. It is the skin’s way of protecting itself from harmful ultraviolet rays. The skin darkening is due to the Melanin pigment, released by the Melanocyte skin cells. The Melanin pigment absorbs the UA rays.
There are two kinds of Ultraviolet rays, the UVA and the UVB. Of these, the UVB rays are more dangerous to your health. Prolonged exposure can cause sunburn and lead to skin cancer. It is important to keep this mind when going for a tanning session.
Popularity of Tanning
Tanning is as popular in the Western part of the world as becoming fair is popular in the Eastern parts. In both cases it is one of those idiotic fashion impulses that have really little to do with good health.
In the olden times, tanning was something that happened naturally to all those who worked outdoors, farmers, laborers, hawkers, soldiers, and so on. The nobles and the aristocrats didn’t expose themselves to the elements all that much and they considered a tanned skin as something uncouth and low-class; it wasn’t even on the fashion list for them. The beauty standard in those days upheld pale, unblemished complexions. A tan meant that you couldn’t afford to relax indoors and loaf at social dos.
Then centuries later Coco Chanel, the famous French fashion designer, overexposed herself on a summer holiday and decided to make the best of a sunburned situation. It’s the same angle that Mark Twain used in his ‘Tom whitewashes the fence’ story in Chapter Two of Tom Sawyer. Make everyone desire what you can’t get out of. It worked too. Suddenly a tanned appearance was the new look of the high class elite and everyone with any fashion pretensions in the Western Hemisphere was scrambling for a place in the sun.
Nowadays it is for a place on the tanning bed. This source of artificial tanning allows you to get your tan indoors and so is pretty handy on the dark winter days when the sun isn’t doing a good enough job and putting a spanner in the fashion works. Tanning beds are easy to use and come in many varieties and with many unique features.
So now everyone who wants to can visit a tanning salon or get their own tanning bed, and can tan their hides to their heart’s content. Some, of course, don’t know where to stop and turn out in strange shades of orange. And, if they happen to be celebrities, show up inconveniently the first thing in the morning on the front pages of newspapers or on magazine covers.
Tanning Bed Tips
1. The ’strange shades of orange’ quip brings us to the first and main tanning bed tip. If you’re going for a tanning session, please don’t overdo it. Tanning beds aren’t intended for long afternoon snoozes. If the tanning salon staff doesn’t roust you up - as they should for the continued good of their business in these litigious times - do bestir yourself. You should not lie on a tanning bed for more than 30 minutes. Longer than that will damage your skin. Let your tan develop gradually.
2. The second and equally important tanning tip is to protect your eyes at all times when you are on the tanning bed. Remove contact lens if you use them and don’t rely on sunglasses or cotton pads. Wear goggles. All tanning saloons will offer different kinds of goggles for free, on loan, or for sale. Goggles annoy many people as they cause tan lines, but you don’t necessarily have to wear the ones with the thickest elastic straps. You can go for ones that will cause the least amount of tan lines or cause no tan lines at all. There are many types of designs to choose from.
3. How fast you tan depends on genetics. Some people tan at once and some take longer. If you belong to the latter category, don’t rush it. You should undergo only one tanning session per day and also let a couple of days go in between before the next one. Once you have built up a base tan, tanning once or twice a week should suffice.
4. Take a shower before your tanning session. Use moisturizing soaps like Tone and Dove.
5. Keep your skin well-moisturized when tanning. Moisturized skin tans better than dry skin. Moisturize afterwards too. Use moisturizing lotions containing sodium PCA (sodium pyrollidone carboxylic acid), sodium isethionate, glycerin, panthenol, Vitamin E, and Vitamin C.
6. Eat healthy. Foods with high beta-carotene, like tomatoes, citrus fruits, carrots, radishes, lettuce, parsley, broccoli, and celery, are excellent for your skin.
| By Sonal Panse Published: 5/25/2007 |
More information about home tanning beds:
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