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Endorphins Make Tanning Addictive
Rambo Tribble writes: Research published in the journal Cell describes a mechanism whereby exposure to UV light leads to endorphin production in the skin. Additionally, they show that rodents exhibit the characteristics of addiction to those substances. This adds to earlier studies which demonstrated withdrawal-like symptoms in frequent tanners One of the researchers, Dr. David Fisher, commented, "It sounds like a cruel joke to be addicted the most ubiquitous carcinogen in the world,' The researchers conclusions are subject to some skepticism, however. Addiction researcher Dr. David Belin is quoted as opining, "... their study is going to be seminal even though their conclusions are not supported by their results." The BBC offers nicely rounded coverage, as well.
Geeks can't get a tan from their mothers basement.
I can certainly believe that tanning would be addictive. I know some people who just don't seem to be able to stay off the tanning beds. At age 30 they have the skin of 60-year-olds. (Although this is in Sweden, where you only get a couple of hours of natural sunlight per day in the winter, and lack-of-sun depression is probably more common than tanning addiction by orders of magnitude.)
First, Colorado legalizes weed, resulting in a Rocky Mountain high, and now we have evidence that sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Comparing it to runner`s high is what I was thinking too.
I think the criticism of the paper was a little off, or at minimal the person was creating an unnecessarily high bar. Not all addition is equal, not all withdraw symptoms are crippling, and "must be life destroying" only applies when you are talking DSM level addiction, not the physiological process.
Caffeine would be a good example of this. Physically addicting, has withdraw symptoms, but does not rise to the level of DSM addiction since people generally do not choose it over all other things. But it is still addictive.
Listen to the children, the stuff they draw has actually a meaning. They know sunlight makes addictive, this is the cause why they draw a smiley into the sun.
Whenever someone questions whether an article is news for nerds, someone usually comes out and uses silly and trivial excuses to justify why the article is here.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
So going outside and getting some sunshine makes you feel good. Who would have guessed?
Sunlight is addictive. So is food. So is water. So is oxygen. Do without any of these things for an extended period of time and you'll see what I mean.
Too much sunlight is bad. Too much food is bad. Too much water is bad. Too much oxygen is bad. Do your own experiments if you need to confirm these things - but don't complain to the rest of the world when you end up sunburnt, obese, suffering water intoxication or respiratory failure.
*Sheesh*
You sure that brown color is from tanning?
So being in the nice sunshine makes you feel good. Wow, all those PE coaches and Rec Center Activity directors were all right. Not to mention my mom who always kept telling to go play outside. Or was that play on the freeway? I can't remember.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Another thing that's obvious made to sound groundbreaking.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
You sure that brown color is from tanning?
San Francisco joke is offensive. Funny too, butt still ;)
Dr. David Fisher, commented, "It sounds like a cruel joke to be addicted the most ubiquitous carcinogen in the world.' This doesn't seem like a really intelligent thing to say. Smoking is probably just as addictive due to nicotine and clearly, it's a carcinogen as well. I guess that would be a cruel joke too?
but.. by the time your cock is clearly displayed in front of them its generally too late, when you walk in as not a black man and pickup a girl, they surely can't be expecting a big black cock..
"sorry i was expecting bigger and blacker i've changed my mind"
I've never been told that before
i hope they all get dick cancer for being such shallow douches
... for kicking the habit so publicly.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I know a girl that tans so much she has to dye her brown hair black because it looks weird if her skins darker than her hair. But then her eyebrows didn't show up so she started dyeing those. But it was too hard to keep up with so she had them removed with a laser, and TATTOOED her eyebrows and eyeliner on black. Her friends jokingly call her an umpa lumpa to her face and she giggles and goes along with it. So yea, there's either something addictive about tanning or that chicks bat shit crazy.
...who would like to remind you that sunshine will kill you, so be sure to get your vitamin D by drinking four to eight glasses of milk every day.
When I've lived in northern climates, I've occasionally had a couple of tanning sessions to fight the winter blues. It works great.
Summary says
It sounds like a cruel joke to be addicted the most ubiquitous carcinogen in the world
But UV exposure let the body produce vitamin D, which enables the immune system to fight cancer more efficiently, hence things are not that simple
In fact, avoiding UV probably means swapping skin cancers with other cancers. The nice point with skin cancers is that you have a chance to spot them early, so personally, I would choose UV exposure.
The effectiveness of vitamin D as a cancer treatment is highly debatable, and anyone claiming otherwise (for or against) is mistaken or selling something. Not all UV radiation has the same effect on your skin. Tanning beds are tuned to make you tan; they are not particularly effective for vitamin D production.
You should avoid tanning. I am sure no one who has had skin cancer would recommend the experience. You're presenting a false dichotomy. Even if vitamin D were effective as a cancer remedy, it does not follow that tanning is a good way to get vitamin D. How much sun or dietary components you need to fulfill your body's needs for vitamin D is also difficult to estimate, and depend significantly on latitude, but there is little evidence to suggest that the amount of sun exposure required would produce or maintain changes of skin tone.
For what it's worth, I'm from Alaska and pretty used to taking vitamin D supplements throughout the winter. That and heavy drinking. I prefer living in the tropics and maintaining a natural tan. My mother was taken in by the vitamin D crowd when my father developed cancer, not to the point of rejecting traditional medicine, however. It is easy to find biased sources of information promoting many natural remedies; it is harder to find good studies. Like they say, "You know what they call alternative medicine that works? Medicine." If you're inclined to dispute any of the above please cite reputable studies. If, for any given remedy, one can't demonstrate a significant effect with a large group of people and a well-controlled study, it's a pretty useless remedy.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
"This was a 4-y, population-based, double-blind, randomized placebo-controlled trial. The primary outcome was fracture incidence, and the principal secondary outcome was cancer incidence."
Eating a lots of vegetables and fruits and mushrooms can also reduce cancer risk (see Dr. Joel Fuhrman's summary works like "Eat To Live" with many references). I've found by eating more fruits and vegetables that my skin tone has changed from pale to having more color (even in winter). Adequate iodine can also help prevent cancer.
Reducing risk of incidence is not the same as cure though. Sorry to hear about you father getting cancer. Once you get cancer, everything is iffy, so cancer is best avoided preventatively. Fasting may also help in some cancer situations, and it also helps with chemotherapy by protecting cells from the toxic chemicals (since fasting seems to causes many normal cells to go into a safe survival mode but cancer cells generally do not). And eating better may hope prevent recurrence. In general, the human body is always developing cancerous cells, but generally they are dealt with by the immune system. So boosting the immune system could help with some cancers and there are many ways to do that -- but again, it is all iffy once cancer is established.
See also for other ideas:
http://science-beta.slashdot.o...
I agree supplements and natural sunlight are probably better choices than tanning beds --although there may still be unknowns about how the skin reacts to sun or tanning beds and produces many compounds vs. supplements. I also agree conventional tanning beds are not tuned to give lots of vitamin D.That is unfortunate, even if they produce some. See also about other tanning choices (and supplement suggestions):
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org...
"If you choose to use a tanning bed, the Vitamin D Council recommends using the same common sense you use in getting sunlight. This includes:
Getting half the amount of exposure that it takes for your skin to turn pink.
Using low-pressure beds that has good amount of UVB light, rather than high-intensity UVA light."
BTW, if you look into chemotherapy for cancer, for many cancers you'll find it is of questionable value relative to the costs both in money and suffering, where is on average may add at most a couple months of life on average if that. Chemotherapy can apparently even sometimes make cancer worse:
http://www.nydailynews.com/lif...
"The scientists found that healthy cells damaged by chemotherapy secreted more of a protein called WNT16B which boosts cancer cell survival."
It's hard to know who to trust regarding medical research results or interpretations:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-j...
"The problems I've discussed are not limited to psychiatry, although they reach their most florid form there. Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. (Marcia Angell)"
Good luck sorting it all out. I've suggested creating better tools for medical sensemaking, but still not time to work on them...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.