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Anonymous
Someone tell me the difference between a tanning bed and the sun. Is one more dangerous than the other?

not trolling, just misinformed
>> Anonymous
>>449069

One is your directly getting a steady rate of cancerous light to your body that is unnatural, Other one is a bit more varied amount of light that is healthy and natural for your body.
>> .:Desu:. !EFlnwiGxd6
Natural sun feels great.
>> Anonymous
I have a semi related question, except mine is far stupider than OP's.

If you go out in the sun, but have sunscreen on, do you still get a tan but without the sunburn?
>> Anonymous
I RAGEEEE every time somebody says UV-->tan.

Tan=pigment (eumelanin) released from special "skin" cells (melanocytes). If you want to get tan, you want to increase your eumelanin.

How do you increase eumelanin? Sunlight, clearly. The biological purpose of a tan is to combat UV light.

Sunlight --> UV light --> body senses "danger" (UV light=DNA damage via thymine dimers etc=non buono) --> special cells (keratinocytes) secrete melanocyte-stimulating hormone (MSH) --> other special cells (melanocytes) are induced to produce melanin (eumelanin=brown/tan, phaeomelanin=red) from that MSH --> melanin "reflects" UV light, preventing potential DNA damage in the future


Sunscreen blocks UV light from your skin, so your body won't get as strong a "danger" signal, so it won't make so much MSH-->melanin-->tan. However, studies have shown that even just wearing sunglasses can decrease your "level" of tan, so clearly there's more to it than just how much sun your skin gets.

TL;DR (unless you want to be nerd-ed out):

>>449069
Both are dangerous obviously. Tanning beds are just more dangerous because they deliver a much higher "dose" of UV than sunlight would. The "healthiest" tan would be from gradual "doses" of natural sunlight,so your body had time to recover from the damage and build melanin defenses.

>>449092
Sunscreen would decrease how tan you got, but you would still be slightly darker.
>> Anonymous
>>449137

Also, FYI, researchers are working on "tan" pills. Pop a pill that contains MSH, and you get a tan with NONE of the skin-cancer side effects. It would actually be HEALTHIER for you to take the MSH pill because then you would have a natural melanin "sunscreen".
>> Anonymous
>>449145
although not my field at all, i have always wondered WTF they were waiting for on these...the market would be immense. i day dreamed about this idea more than a decade ago, "wouldnt it be nice if?" well. glad to see the ball is rolling. got any links to the research?

i wonder if we'd see more immediate Vit D deficiency issues, less skin cancer about 20 years out, and more osteoporosis 50 years down the line because of it...but i doubt it. its not like people give a shit about sun damage, and now most people would think they have 'sun kevlar' and be out even longer. add into the effect the ever growing 'strength' of UV radiation per unit time due to thinning atmosphere...