“Avoid Swine Flu with a Tan!” Sounds like a good trade off, right? Well, not exactly.
Normally when you walk into a tanning salon you’d expect to find lotion, eye protection, and maybe nail savers. However, on my last visit to the Tanning Bed I found something a little different: an ad campaign (endorsed by a doctor) sitting on the counter screaming in bold letters: “Avoid Swine Flu with a tan!”
The ad goes on to explain how it has been proven that an increase in vitamin D, whether from sunlight or ultraviolet light, will greatly reduce your risk of swine flu this season.
So where’s the catch? We all know the effects tanning can have on the human body. The biggest and most obvious negative is that tanning is linked to cancer; skin cancer in particular. Skin cancer, in my opinion, is a greater, more severe risk than the H1N1 virus despite the hype of the growing epidemic. The fact that advertisement would even push tanning on a person as a health benefit is appalling to me.
It has been proven that if you are receiving the correct amount of vitamin D your chances of getting the flu decrease. But besides risking the health of your skin there are alternative methods to getting the needed amount of vitamin D.
For example, egg yolks and vanilla milkshakes contain Vitamin D. Or you can buy Vitamin D supplements. All these ways seem more practical and healthier then frying your skin underneath ultraviolet light.
Has the recession hurt the tanning business so badly that they are trying to persuade people to tan as a health benefit? Hopefully this method will fail and people won’t fall for this outrageous ad that screams, “Avoid Swine Flu with a tan!” When it should really read “Possibly avoid Swine Flu while taking your chances with skin cancer.”
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