Sun

A few clarifications on tanning beds

I recently posted on the new law in California that bans indoor tanning for those under 14, and prohibits 14-18 year old minors from using tanning beds without their parent's permission.  A few additional thoughts.

First, the purpose of my post isn't to advocate the use of tanning beds.

Second, I'm not arguing that there aren't risks to certain types of UV over-exposure, whether in a tanning bed or in the sun.  There most certainly are.  These risks, particularly for fair-skinned people, seem to include non-melanoma skin cancer (more common forms of skin cancer, though less deadly), melanoma (less common, more deadly), wrinkles (deadly to some, apparently), and other types of skin damage. 

Third, the typical experience in a typical tanning bed does not replicate the experience of being in the sun.  Tanning beds tend to go heavy on UVA, which doesn't stimulate the production of Vitamin D, and with higher intensity levels than most people would typically experience (particularly away from the equator).  Plus, people in tanning salons are exposed to an extremely high intensity, but low quality auditory waves, also known as shitty pop music.

Fourth, the indoor tanning industry is a lot like their core clientele: pretty ditzy.  I've asked various salons for the UV spectrum and intensity emitted by their machines and bulbs, but none of them seem to know.  This is the most informed response I've heard: "These machines are more UVB, but you'll get redder in them, so use these more expensive ones that are UVA." 

Fifth, I accept that minors shouldn't be allowed to engage in certain types of dangerous activities that adults are allowed to engage in.  Smoking cigarettes is addictive, and so on.

So I accept all that.  Those aren't my issues.  My issue is the growing tendency to try to legislate healthy behavior.

I have both moral and pragmatic issues with this.  Morally, I'll concede that I have a higher threshold for when the government is justified in stepping in -- I think individuals should have enormous discretion over decisions in their own lives.  But I'll put that aside for the moment to speak to pragmatic-minded people who are in favor of technocratic legislation of health decisions.  How does this process actually work in practice?

I called up the office of State Senator Ted Lieu to ask for the scientific references they are basing their decision on, and the cost-benefit analysis.  I was directed to a press release for the legislation (plus prior press releases on the topic).  At least I wasn't put on hold, and the response was quick and courteous.

The press release includes three links to one website: indoortanningreportcard.com, a site which opposes indoor tanning and supports legislation to restrict it, as well as a link to this short overview on radiation as a carcinogen.  No link to a cost-benefit analysis.

On the Indoor Tanning Report Card site, there are a few links to various papers, but get this.  They ran their own study and this was their top finding:

"Tanning salons located in states with youth access laws were more likely to require the teen to obtain parental consent to tan. However, youth access law (presence vs. absence) did NOT relate to whether teens had actually used indoor tanning. This may be because many parents are providing their consent."

Their top finding was that parental consent laws don't actually work.  Apparently, California didn't get the memo.  I found this astounding -- the main conclusion of the advocacy group is that the very type of law passed by California doesn't work.  (They advocate a total ban for minors.)

What about a cost-benefit analysis?  Still nowhere to be found.  Would it be so hard to make a single spreadsheet that has the following, with citations?

  • # of minors who visit tanning salons
  • increased risk of cancer based on visits as a minor (low, medium, high estimates)
  • prevalence of those types of cancer
  • severity of those types of cancer
  • medical benefits of tanning bed use (any vitamin D?, complexion)
  • compare with likely alternative: minors giving themselves sunburns on beaches or staying out of the sun entirely
  • consider the social cost of having to look at more people with spray tans
  • cost to enforce the legislation
  • see how this compares with other activities we would never consider banning, like swimming, bike riding, watching TV, getting a driver's license at 16, and trick-or-treating on Halloween

If I'm going to be governed by a technocracy, then I at least expect there should be a one-page cost-benefit analysis of every single law and regulation that comes out of our government.  This probably won't have a big impact on the big stuff, which people will just disagree on, but it will have an impact on all this little stuff that abounds.  If you can't even do a cost-benefit analysis, then perhaps technocracy only works in theory.

When it comes to the science, I don't have time or space to adjudicate the debate in this post.  But here are other potential risk factors that this legislation ignores or won't address:

  • Does the use of traditional sunscreens increase the risk of skin cancer?  Traditional sunscreens only block a portion of the UV spectrum and disassociate the signal of damage (a burn) from actual damage that is still happening.
  • A society that rarely gets sun anymore, and then when we do get sun, it's way more than our body is prepared to handle
  • General indifference to the long-term consequences of sun burns
  • Diets and medications that make our skin more sensitive to the sun
  • A base level of skin cancer inherent to certain skin types, even if people were never actually exposed to the sun or tanning beds
  • Why do many melanomas appear on parts of the body that are usually not exposed to the sun?
  • Whether regular, moderate exposure to the sun reduces the incidence of skin cancer

If the scientific community is still in disagreement about some of these issues -- and what constitutes a healthy relationship with the sun -- why would we ever expect our political system to arrive at good outcomes?

In and of itself, a law that bans tanning for those under 14 and requires parental permission for minor 14-18 isn't the end of freedom in America.  But it represents an increasingly aggressive mindset that is eager to micro-manage people's behavior, including banning fatty foods and salt.

Gwyneth Paltrow has osteopenia, needs more sun

Gwyneth Paltrow has brittle bones -- and needs more sun.

In her newsletter, she recently told the story of fracturing her leg, going to doctors, and being diagnosed with osteopenia, a precursor to osteoperosis.  Her doctors said her Vitamin D levels were "the lowest they had ever seen".   Gwyneth's reaction to being told to get more sun?  Much like anyone else's who has heard scary headline after scary headline on the dangers of sun exposure: "I was curious if this was safe, having been told for years to stay away from its dangerous rays, not to mention a tad bit confused."

She includes an essay which is one of the clearest articulations I've read on the benefits of Vitamin D and sensible sun exposure.  Read the whole thing here. 

Via Hyperlipid and Celebitchy.

Assorted links

 

 1. Another benchmark in Craig Venter's quest to create life.
 
The pros: "I think they're going to potentially create a new industrial revolution," [Venter] said.  "If we can really get cells to do the production that we want, they could help wean us off oil and reverse some of the damage to the environment by capturing carbon dioxide."
 
The cons: "We don't know how these organisms will behave in the environment." [Dr. Helen Wallace of Genewatch]
 
2. Michael Holick interview with the New York Times (a few months old)
 
"The American Academy of Dermatology still has that recommendation that you should never be exposed to one ray of direct sunlight without sun protection."
 
3. Michael Pollan's The Food Movement, Rising in the New York Review of Books
 
On the different parts of the food movement:
 
"Among the many threads of advocacy that can be lumped together under that rubric we can include school lunch reform; the campaign for animal rights and welfare; the campaign against genetically modified crops; the rise of organic and locally produced food; efforts to combat obesity and type 2 diabetes; “food sovereignty” (the principle that nations should be allowed to decide their agricultural policies rather than submit to free trade regimes); farm bill reform; food safety regulation; farmland preservation; student organizing around food issues on campus; efforts to promote urban agriculture and ensure that communities have access to healthy food; initiatives to create gardens and cooking classes in schools; farm worker rights; nutrition labeling; feedlot pollution; and the various efforts to regulate food ingredients and marketing, especially to kids.
 
It’s a big, lumpy tent..."
 
 
On libertarians and evangelicals:
 
In his 2006 book Crunchy Cons, Rod Dreher identifies a strain of libertarian conservatism, often evangelical, that regards fast food as anathema to family values, and has seized on local food as a kind of culinary counterpart to home schooling.
 
And more on traditionalism:
 
In a challenge to second-wave feminists who urged women to get out of the kitchen, Flammang suggests that by denigrating “foodwork”—everything involved in putting meals on the family table—we have unthinkingly wrecked one of the nurseries of democracy: the family meal."
 
(Much the rest is familiar if you've read Pollan before and doesn't bear on the excerpts above.)

 

Why I went to the tanning salon this winter

Part of paleo is about experimentation and discovery.  This winter I started experimenting with going to the solarium....better known as the tanning salon.  That's right, I went to the tanning salon.  Really courting medical controversy here.  So here's why I went.

My initial reason was to get a base layer and avoid a sunburn in Mexico.  I had signed up for the MovNat course in Mexico in mid-January, and it seemed prudent to get a base layer to make it less likely I would burn in Mexico.  Sun burns are what cause the most damage to your skin and most increase your chances of skin cancer.  My sessions were purposefully short duration (<7 minutes) and low intensity, and so I needed to do a few of them before I got a noticeable tan.

Healthy Vitamin D levels decrease your overall chances of getting cancer.  My reading of the literature indicated that 1) it's extremely difficult to get sufficient Vitamin D from food and even supplements, 2) the deadly forms of skin cancer are more rare than generally thought, 3) they don't seem connected to sun exposure per se (sun burns are the more likely culprit), and 4) and your higher chances of getting skin cancer are far outweighed by the cancers you avoid by getting enough Vitamin D.  Use of a tanning bed -- with the right UV frequencies -- has also been shown to increase Vitamin D levels.  As for a few more wrinkles as I get older, that seems to be true, but I just don't care.  For an excellent overview of what we know about the sun, Vitamin D, and cancer, watch this video by Dr. Michael Holick at BU.  (He doesn't endorse tanning.)

My mood improved immediately.  I don't know what to say, it just did away with the winter doldrums.  The first time I went was in early January in New York City.

Now, would it better to get moderate sun exposure?  Yes.  Would it be better to have a UV solution in winter that mimicked natural sun light? Yes. Is it a good idea to go to the tanning salon to get burnt to a crisp in 10 minutes?  No, of course not. 

Who could benefit most from going to the solarium?  People with dark skin.  Dark-skinned people are adapted for an equatorial environment with enormously high sun exposure all year round.  It's as if they are wearing high SPF skin block all the time.  They need more sun to generate the same amount of Vitamin D as a fair-skinner person.  So black people who live in high latitudes or who live near the equator but are covered up all the time are particularly at risk.  Bad news for burqas -- blocking out the sun is causing rickets and osteoporosis in Middle Eastern women.  From the abstract:  

"Despite ample sunshine, the Middle East (15°-36°N) and Africa (35°S-37°N), register the highest rates of rickets worldwide. This is in large part explained by limited sun exposure due to cultural practices and prolonged breast feeding without vitamin D supplementation in the Middle East, and by dark skin colour and calcium deficiency, rather than vitamin D deficiency, in several countries in Africa. Both regions also have a high prevalence for hypovitaminosis D, the latency disease for osteoporosis, and the main focus of this discussion."
 
Wouldn't it be ironic if the first tax enacted as part of the health care plan was actually counter-productive?  I'd be willing to wager that the 10% tax on tanning salons caused a net decrease in the health of African-Americans.  (Not sure how many actually go.)
 
Anyhow, here's to a little experimentation.  I'm sure I'll have a few more posts on this taboo subject in the days to come.

 

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