Why, when the cancer tie is clear, do people still sunbathe?

 DALLAS — Jenna Hoffman thinks that people, herself included, generally look better with a tan — “better than bright white,” she says.

So most weekends, she’s lying outside with her eyes closed, listening to music while the sun darkens her skin. If she knows she’ll be outside all day, she wears sunscreen.

Otherwise, “I don’t wear it every time because I’m trying to get a tan,” says Hoffman, 29, who lives in Dallas.

Because skin cancer runs in her family, and because she’s had a few pre-cancerous spots removed, she goes to the dermatologist every six months.

Sunbathing “is always taking a risk,” says Hoffman, who is blond and fair-skinned. “If anything pops up, I’ll get it removed.”

Despite well-publicized research about the risks of sunbathing, despite skin cancer being the most common malignancy in the United States and despite a rise in melanoma rates — the American Cancer Society predicts 77,000 new cases and 9,000 deaths in 2013 — Hoffman’s attitude isn’t uncommon.

One reason is that tanning is like other unhealthful habits, says dermatologist Cameron Coury of Richardson, Texas.

“We know smoking is bad for us, but people still smoke,” says Coury. “There’s some sort of satisfaction.”

Additionally, “there’s a social component to being tan,” she says. “They’re out at the lake and the pool and think it’s fun.”

Dr. Jerald L. Sklar sighs when asked why people continue to suntan, when sun exposure is responsible for so many types and cases of skin cancer.

Sklar, a physician on staff at Baylor University Medical Center, offers three possibilities:

A tanning addiction: “They get a brain high that makes them happy,” he says.

A vitamin D issue: Yes, some sun is needed to help strengthen bones, he says, “but not enough to risk skin cancer.”

An invincible feeling: “The younger crowd — teenagers, young adults — think they’re invincible,” says Sklar. “They think you have to have that ‘healthy’ tan. They’re not realizing later in life the damage this causes.”

Says Coury: “My younger patients don’t see brown spots or wrinkles or changing moles. That doesn’t mean when you’re 50 and something pops up, you won’t wish you’d lived your younger lives differently.”

Many people — including Hoffman, who says she looks slimmer when she’s tan — associate being bronze with being healthy. That wasn’t always the case, Coury says. At some points in history, having pale skin showed you didn’t have to earn a living working outdoors.

But now “we live in a time when everyone is aware of physical appearance and wants to look good and young and healthy and all those things,” she says.

When a close friend ended up with the disease, Rebecca Thompson changed her tanning habits. Thompson, 39, remembers coating her skin with baby oil in her teen years and climbing onto the roof of her house to sunbathe.

During summer camp, she never wore sunscreen. In high school and college, she’d sometimes go to a tanning booth, especially if she had an important event coming up.

Although she likes feeling the sun on her skin as she reads by the pool, Thompson has cut back on sunbathing. She might go out about 10 times during the summer, and “I slather on the sunscreen.”

“When my friend was diagnosed, it was a wake-up call,” says Thompson, a fourth-grade teacher. “I still like to tan; I still like to lay out. But my skin doesn’t get as much sun because I use so much sunblock.”

Another reason she “lathers up,” she says, is to avoid getting wrinkles.

Sklar uses that potential outcome when he can’t seem to reach young women about the skin-cancer aspect, he says.

“I try to hit on both to get their attention,” he says. “They’re immortal at that age, so maybe the skin damage-wrinkle aspect is better.”

Source Times Dispatch.com