Health Benefits of Indoor Tanning

What effects do tanning beds have on your skin and health?

Most, if not all who belong to the tanning bed industry agree that tanning indoors is much safer when compared to natural sun tanning, which usually requires some exposure to the harmful rays of the sun.

Tanning equipment emits light that contains just about 40% less UVB light. Tanning beds provides for the control of exposure time as well as the ratio of UVB (B-urning) rays to UVA (A-ging) rays, allowing you to get to a ‘perfect balance’ between the two. Tanning beds can dramatically decrease your chances of getting burned since this type of tanning equipment was made to filter out majority of the UVB rays.

Some of the UV radiation from tanning beds is also beneficial for the body’s production of Vitamin D, an important factor in maintaining a constant level of calcium in the blood and in controlling its absorption.

Tanning beds limit the amount of UVB radiation that it produces, therefore allowing you to get more UVA and less of the harmful UVB rays. It is known that UVA rays penetrate deep into the layers of the skin and, according to tanning bed producers, will therefore not cause any damage such as burned skin, premature aging or will cause the skin to thicken.

Tanning bed manufacturers even go as far to say that it is not safe to tan. These manufacturers say that avoidance of the sun can increase one’s risks for developing certain types of cancer. There are also some studies that revealed that some exposure to the sun holds back the development of colon, breast, ovarian and prostate cancers.