How does Tanning
Happen?
To many people, summer means hanging out at the pool or the
beach, soaking up rays in pursuit of a golden tan and in commercial teen
modelling tanning is extremely popular. Before you put on your bathing suit and
head to the pool (or pay for a bed or booth in a tanning salon), there are a
few things to think about when it comes to your skin and sun exposure. The
sun's rays contain two types of ultraviolet radiation that reach your skin: UVA
and UVB. UVB radiation burns the upper layers of skin (the epidermis), causing
sunburns. UVA radiation is what makes people tan. UVA rays penetrate to the
lower layers of the epidermis, where they trigger cells called melanocytes to
produce melanin. Melanin is the brown pigment that causes tanning.
Melanin is the body's way of protecting skin from burning.
Darker-skinned people tan more deeply than lighter-skinned people because their
melanocytes produce more melanin. But just because a person doesn't burn does
not mean that he or she is also protected against skin cancer and other
problems. UVA rays may make you tan, but they can also cause serious damage.
That's because UVA rays penetrate deeper into the skin than UVB rays. UVA rays
can go all the way through the skin's protective epidermis to the dermis, where
blood vessels and nerves are found. Because of this, UVA rays may damage a
person's immune system, making it harder to fight off diseases and leading to
illnesses like melanoma, the most serious type of skin cancer. Melanoma can
kill. If it's not found and treated, it can quickly spread from the skin to the
body's other organs. Although the numbers of new cases of many other types of
cancer are falling or levelling off, the number of new melanoma cases is
growing.
In the past, melanoma mostly affected people in their fifties or
older, but today dermatologists see patients in their twenties and even late
teens with this type of cancer. Experts believe this is partly due to an
increase in the use of tanning beds and sun lamps, which have high levels of
UVA rays. Getting a sunburn or intense sun exposure may also increase a
person's chances of developing this deadly cancer. This is a concern for
everyone no matter the age.
Exposure to UVB rays also increases your risk of getting two
other types of skin cancer: basal and squamous cell carcinoma. The main
treatment for skin cancers is cutting the tumours out. Since many basal or
squamous cell carcinomas are on the face and neck, surgery to remove them can leave
people with facial scars which wouldn’t be good news for teen modelling. The
scars from surgery to remove melanomas can be anywhere on the body, and they're
often large and can stop you getting teen modelling jobs.
As a teen modelling, UVA
damage is something to keep away from as the main factor in premature skin aging. To get a good idea of how
sunlight affects the skin, look at your parents' skin and see how different it
is from yours. Much of that is due to sun exposure, not the age difference! UV
rays can also lead to another problem we associate with old people: the eye
problem cataracts.
