Going to the beach or travelling to a sunny place could sound like a very nice idea especially when its for the purpose of skin tanning. A tanned skin is believed to make your skin look more beautiful and make you look less pale.
1. What is skin tanning?
Tanning is the process where existing melanin cells which are responsible for the production of skin pigment, mean cells which are responsible for the color of our skin are darken by ultraviolet rays from ultraviolet emitting sources e.g the sun and tanning beds. During tanning there is also an increase in the production of these melanin cells. The adverse affects associated with skin tanning are mainly caused by ultraviolet rays.
2. Effects of ultraviolet rays
Ultraviolet rays are effective, these ultraviolet rays may be responsible in tanning the skin, it could also have its negative and positive effects to the skin. Some of these effects are given below.
3. Positive effects
Ultraviolet rays contain vitamin D, which is very important to the body. Vitamin D helps to strengthen the immune system, it is also recommended for new born babies suffering from jaundice.
Ultraviolet rays aids in killing of bacteria and other micro-organism cells on the skin or on cloth.
4. Negative effects
Ultraviolet rays have been proven to be one of the major causes of cancer in humans some of these cancers include;
-Basal and squamous cell skin cancer
-Melanoma
-Markel cell carcinoma
-Cancer of the lip
-Melanoma of the eye
-Carcinoma of the conjunctiva
Sunburn, when ultraviolet rays damage skin cells the bodies immune system travel immediately through the blood to the affected in an effort to repair damaged cells in the skin, thereby causing redness of the skin. This is referred to as sunburn.
Ultraviolet rays tend to disrupt the proper functioning of the body immune system. When skin cells are constantly damaged by ultraviolet rays the immune system tend to focus more on areas affected by ultraviolet rays, thereby making them unavailable to other parts of the body where they are needed.
Continuous exposure to ultraviolet rays can cause photokeratitis. Photokeratitis refers to the damage of certain tissues in the eyes.
As beautiful as you think tanning your skin might make you look, you should avoid overexposure to ultraviolet rays.
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