Tanning Beds are Evil

I like to tan as much as the next light-skinned bi-racial girl.  In fact, a couple years ago a 6-minute daily session was free at my gym.

And of course my dumb butt took full advantage of it.  That daily dose of faux vitamin D got me through the depression I didn’t know I had until I stopped tanning.

Before we head off to Cancun next week there is nothing more than I’d like to do than go plop myself down in a tanning bed for 10 minutes a day. Four days of that is all it takes to give me that “healthy glow.”

I don’t know who declared that it’s a social faux paus to arrive in a sunny location sporting a pasty white winter anti-glow but I believe them.

Unfortunately.

Before my Senior trip, before my best friends’ weddings, before my own wedding and honeymoon, before a trip to St. Lucia and sometimes just for kicks –I’ve tanned.

Problem is, using tanning beds before 30 triples your Skin Cancer risk.  In fact, the reason why I stopped tanning at my gym a few years ago is because of the FACT that International Cancer Experts have now rated tanning at the electric beach up there with smoking, arsenic and mustard gas!

Using tanning beds are downright dangerous.  For example did you know this:

The risk of melanoma was increased by 300% for those using tanning beds occasionally and by 800% for those using tanning beds more than 10 times a year. The FDA estimates that about 38,000 people will be diagnosed with melanoma this year in the U.S. and 7,300 people will die from this condition.

If you’d like to kill yourself and know that it’s absolutely your fault, go ahead and pay to die by using tanning beds.  Evil. Evil. Evil.  You may as well be a chain smoker.

How could I be a responsible human being, wife, mother, daughter & best friend to all my loved ones if I took the further risk of developing Skin Cancer (that’s in addition to all the damage I’ve all ready done) by going to the kill yourself quickly centers tanning beds?

I can’t.

Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to Cancun -pasty white- I go!

What about you, how often have you tanned?  Are you kicking yourself now like I am?