According to an article in The Daily Texan, law student Emily Prewett, has filed a complaint with the Texas Attorney General against the company Darque Tan because of their misleading and irresponsible ads. One of their television commercial begins with a man in white lab coat saying, “Science has discovered that UVB from tanning converts cholesterol into Vitamin D.” Then the narrator says, “Mmm yeah. Vitamin D-licious. Come get yours with a free week of level 1 tanning.” The TV ad and more details, inside…
In another advertisement a man in a lab coat says, “Getting the Vitamin D you need has never been easier. To get you 4000 IU, it takes 20 cans of sardines – Mmm good – or 40 glasses of milk, if you tolerate lactose. Better yet, get a full 4000 IU of Vitamin D in just five minutes in a tanning bed at Darque Tan.” Darque Tan seems to want us to believe we would drop dead from a Vitamin D deficiency unless we nourish our bodies with their life giving tanning beds.
Prewett is concerned because the ads portray tanning as a health benefit with no risks. “I don’t have an issue with the company, I just have in issue with that particular advertising campaign,” said Prewett. “I think that’s the wrong message to be sending potential customers. And it’s prohibited for a reason, and it’s because there are so many health studies that link cancer and other risks to UV exposure.”
Prewett’s is not the first complaint lodged against Darque Tan’s advertising campaign. In fact, Darque Tan’s health claims are in clear violation of Texas’ health and safety code which states, “A tanning facility operator may not claim or distribute promotional materials that claim using a tanning device is safe or free from risk or that using a tanning device will result in medical or health benefits.” Doug McBride of Texas Department of State Health Services said, “They cannot make that claim legally. They cannot make any health claim.”
There is little doubt that prolonged UV exposure carries significant risks whether it be from the sun or tanning beds. We agree with Emily that these advertisements are composed of 1 part fact per one hundred parts fiction. With tanning or any product it is irresponsible and dangerous to circulate advertisements that exaggerate or invent health benefits and ignore all of the health risks. Obviously advertisements are going to be biased but there has to be a line that should not be crossed to help up us stay safe. We tip our sun visors to you, Emily.
Darque Tan ads elicit complaint from law student [The Daily Texan] (Thanks to Brad for sending this in!)
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Comment on Darque Tan Prevents You From Dying Of Vitamin-D Deficiency You body does need vitamin D. You create vitamin D in sunlight,
ordinarily. Except we are told relentlessly that the sun is bad.
People make LOTS of money by perpetuating this fear.
Sun, in moderation, is good for you. It’s OK to not be covered from
head to foot. It’s OK to spend time in the sun in moderation.
Further, it’s OK to tan and what’s more, tanning beds produce the same
ultraviolet rays that produce vitamin D in humans.
Yep, radiation is known to cause cancer. The rub? Lots of vitamin D in
your system helps you survive cancer.
If the tanning salon is legally in the wrong by making health claims,
that’s one thing. But legally wrong and actually wrong is another.
Vitamin D is a very necessary nutrient, and the closer to a pole you
live, the more likely you are to be deficient. The US RDA is not
enough. A few glasses of milk is not enough.
Please read the research.
Um, beyond the cancer-causing issue of tanning beds, according to a letter response by John H. White in the March 2008 issue of Scientific American, tanning lamps usually produce more UVA, and not enough UVB, which is the type of UV radiation that actually stimulates vitamin D production. Just take a multivitamin, people.
Wrong Maurs!
Tanning lamps today are made to virtually mirror the same UVA/UVB mix as outdoors. The main difference between outdoors and indoors is not the rays, but the controlled predictable environment offered by professional tanning salons.
Regarding your comments on melanoma, the facts are that 18 of the 22 studies ever conducted on indoor tanning and melanoma show NO CONNECTION AT ALL, including the largest and most recent study. In some studies frequent tanners had a lower risk as compared to non-tanners. (Garland Naval Study)
In a 1997 International Journal of Cancer paper, J. Elwood cited that regular exposure to sunlight decreased the risk of melanoma by 14% and in 2005, Dr. M. Berwick in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute stated that melanoma patients who had a history of sunlight exposure had increased survival rates.
The connection between tanning beds and melanoma has been thoroughly disproved and refuted.
Real risk factors for melanoma are diets low in anti-oxidants, increasing the risk of melanoma by 50%, alcohol consumption increases the risk 65%, and smoking increases the risk 85%.
If you are really concerned about cancer, let’s put skin cancer properly in context.
There are approximately 1,000 skin cancer deaths that occur each year. This is a preventable and easily treated cancer that kills less than 1/10th of 1% of the people who get it. These non-melanoma carcinomas come largely from over exposure to UV light, which is why tanning salons preach moderate controlled exposure.
Melanoma is far more dangerous, claiming 30,000 deaths a year, but as I demonstrated earlier, the link between this and UV exposure is not straight forward and the link between melanoma and indoor tanning is non-existent.
The 1,000 skin cancer deaths that occur each year pale in comparison to the nearly 2,000 internal cancer deaths that occur each day!
The most egregious consequence of this situation is the silent epidemic of Vitamin D deficiency in this country, directly resulting from the stay-out-of-the-sun message.
Unbeknownst to the public, more than 50% of white people and 90% of black people suffer from this deficiency in this country, placing them in higher risk categories for diseases far worse and far more prevalent than skin cancer!
Breast cancer mortality alone could be halved in this country if people were encouraged to seek optimal Vitamin D blood levels. This is true for a whole host of other cancers, autoimmune diseases and heart disease.
The death toll from Vitamin D deficiencies due to inadequate exposure to sunlight was examined in a 2004 paper “UV Radiation, Vitamin D and Human Health” by Drs. Grant, Holick and Garland and was estimated to be between 50,000 – 63,000 persons annually with an economic burden between $40 – $56 billion. That means that 63,000 deaths can be prevented every year!
This is a real number and one that I put squarely on the shoulders of those who spread the sun-scare hype. Unwittingly they, like you, are filling the coffers of the sunscreen industry (who really fund this message) but the unfortunate fall-out is the real human lives and unnecessary sickness that result from the “stay out of the sun” message.
Vitamin D deficiency, eh? Sounds really dangerous. I guess we all need to get our asses out there in the tanning booths!
Wait a second – let me go check my fridge. Oh look – one serving of milk or vitamin D enriched orange juice has 25% of my daily Vit D value. That plus the fact that I do get some sun exposure during the day, and I think I’m golden – no tanning salon needed.
Sunlight causes your DNA to mutate. EVERY TIME you expose your skin to sunlight, your DNA is going to freak out – form dimers, etc, etc. Trust me on that, I’m a biologist. Luckily our bodies can repair themselves, and we have a lot of ‘junk’ DNA that won’t be harmed even if the next round of transcription/translation is messed up by the dimer. The chances of you getting a dimer that’s not correctly repaired and is in such a location that it leads to cancer is overall quite slim. HOWEVER it’s like Russian roulette. Every second more you spend out in the sun, you’re pulling that trigger one more time. More time = more trigger pulls = more chance you’re going to find that bullet!
Have fun with that.
Trust you… because you’re a biologist?
Perhaps you should have paid more attention in class when they were discussing why we evolved as the hairless ape, and why skin types got lighter the further they migrated toward the poles.
It amazes me how we survived all this time if we were damaged EVERY TIME we stepped out in the sun.
Here’s a geeat article from Monica Reinagel, “the nutritionista” who puts this issue properly in context…
May 01, 2008
Vitamin D: Now I’m a believer
To me, the most compelling reason why vitamin D is really in a category of its own, and why most people need far more vitamin D than they can ever get through their diet, is this: Our bodies were not designed to meet our vitamin D requirements through dietary sources–we evolved to produce vitamin D in our skin, when the sun hits it.
That’s why people who originally lived further from the equator have lighter skin–it allows more UV rays to penetrate, which compensates for the weaker rays at those latitudes. The traditional diet of the northern and southern latitudes is also more likely to include oily fish, the richest dietary source of vitamin D.
But now, most of us spend most the daylight hours indoors. Any skin that is showing is slathered in sunscreen to prevent skin cancer and wrinkles. We don’t eat much cod liver. We get most of our vitamin D from fortified dairy products and vitamin supplements, but it’s not nearly enough to meet our requirements.
Holick claims that the majority of Americans are chronically and dramatically D-deficient. Among those at particular risk are those with dark-skin, the elderly, the obese (because vitamin D tends to become trapped in fat cells) and anyone living about the 35th parallel (which runs through Arizona and Georgia). That is the latitude above which it is impossible to manufacture vitamin D in the winter months, even (as Holick to colorfully pointed out) you were to stand on the roof stark naked from noon to 3pm every day.
So what?
Every cell in the body has a receptor for vitamin D. Low blood levels of vitamin D are strongly linked to increased rates of cancer, osteoporosis, chronic pain syndromes, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, Type I diabetes, and hypertension.
In fact, if you chart deaths from colon cancer, prostate cancer, or multiple sclerosis geographically, you can pick out the 35th parallel by eye because the difference in mortality rates is so much higher above that line. (Deaths from multiple sclerosis are 100% higher above 37 N. than below it! )
There’s much more to Dr. Holick’s argument (about 280 slides worth) but suffice it to say, I’m a believer. Vitamin D is now one of only three nutrients I take as supplements (along with fish oil and calcium).
Dr. Holick and others are compaigning to have the government recommendations for vitamin D increased from the current recommendation of 200 – 600IU (depending on your age) to 1,000IU of vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) for everyone. Based on his data, I support that recommendation.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m no fan of tanning. But Robbie-S is right, in this situation, sort of. (I disagree with the idea that melanoma isn’t linked to tanning, but that’s not an argument that can be solved here).
So instead, I’ll get to what I agree with Robbie-S on. Unfortunately, multi-vitamins and artificially fortified foods are not the cure-all for vitamin deficiency. There’s a reason why prescription-strength Vitamin-D contains 50,000 IU of Vitamin-D, or roughly 250 times the daily recommended allowance. Because oral Vitamin-D simply isn’t as bioavailable as skin-manufactured Vitamin-D, especially considering most people’s high-fat diets.
The raw chemical form of a vitamin will never be as bioavailable as the natural form of the vitamin. That 100IU of Vitamin D you get from your milk? That’s because it’s been fortified with Vitamin-D derived from fungus. Your body has a much more difficult time converting that to the useful chemicals than it does the Vitamin-D that’s produced in your skin.
Does this mean that tanning is “just what the doctor ordered”? Of course not. There are plenty of reasons to avoid excess sun exposure. But Firefoxx66′s sentiment that you can just take care of your vitamin-D problem with a little bit of fortified milk or a multivitamin is misguided, and frankly, the reliance on multi-vitamins is indicative of a much larger nutritional issue we face as a society.
But I think it’s time to put the soapbox away.
This whole article is biased right from the start of where it is located..health risks?
The sun gives you life and you can not deny it! If you think it doesnt, heres a little experiment YOU can do. Try putting some seedlings in a closet and see how they rapidly turn white and DIE in just a couple weeks! bring them outside and they will thrive!
As far as melanoma…
Melanoma is mostly a MANS skin cancer and it usually apperars where the sun has never shined but ladies are the predominate ones using tanning beds who tan sensibly and in moderation. Outdoor workers (men) are more at risk than anyone (can you say overexposure?) and even then the amount of actual melanomas are very rare. Between 2000 and 2004, 97 % of people who died from melanoma were over 39 and the median age of those deaths was 67! From what you have read in the media would you have guessed that?
Overall the fatality rate for melanoma is 3 out of every 100,000. In less abstract terms,Thats like going to a sold out football game and 3 of those people will perish from melanoma. When you use the same analogy with lung cancer, 56 people in the crowd will die.
If any of you paid attention,The ad states 5 minutes, NOT a full session in a tanning bed which is moderate and sensible and will not harm anyone, a good starting point for most.
No one said you should start out pasty people at a full time session and only an idiot would do such a thing. Unfortunitly it is the customer who usually demands more time than is recommended and therefor the ones who are most at risk of burning and BURNING is the key here. Burning IS BAD!!! Moderate and Sensible tanning is not.
Over doing anything is unhealthy and if there were no sunbeds then people would spend too much time outside BURNING instead of learning how tanning works from a professional. Just wait and see how the underage girls who have to get sun from the beach now because of being outlawed in some states and watch the skin cancer rates skyrocket. You Know kids, they get what they want no matter what.
You people really need to get your facts straight and get some sun! Your body will thank you for it. Why do you think everyone who goes on vacation goes where it is sunny? Because it FEELS GREAT and they come home with a nice tan!