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"facebook dialogPinterest\n\nA redhead with a milky white complexion, Meghan was always teased for her pale skin. \"People would call me dead or see-through. When I was seventeen, I got a tan on vacation that I was determined to keep,\" she remembers. She soon started using tanning beds once a week for two years to maintain her new skin color, without her parents' knowledge. Then, during a routine physical, Meghan asked her doctor about a dark, itchy mole on her stomach. It was later diagnosed as Stage II melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. She underwent surgery over the next month to remove a portion of her stomach skin and eight lymph nodes under her arms. A five-inch scar from 70 stitches is a visible reminder of the cancer, which her doctor confirms was caused by her frequent use of tanning beds. \"My parents warned me against indoor tanning, but the salon felt safe and sterile, almost medical, so it didn't seem that bad,\" admits Meghan.\n\n It's a common misconception that tanning beds are a safe way to get color. The truth is that they'll expose you to very harmful and carcinogenic levels of radiation, which are known to cause cancers that can be fatal. \"Tanning is the body's way of showing damage--skin darkens from UV exposure because the body adds pigment in response to tissue injury,\" says David E. Fisher, M.D., chairman of the dermatology department and professor at Harvard's Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. \"Many people believe that a tan is natural and healthy and a sunburn is the sign of sun overexposure. Actually, all forms of tanning, with or without burns, are dangerous.\"\n\n Fisher thinks that the use of tanning beds is especially risky behavior, and studies show he's right. Young adults who use sunbeds increase their chance of developing melanoma by 75 percent, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Alarmingly, rates of the disease among young women are also rapidly on the rise: In the last 30 years, melanoma diagnoses have increased by nearly 50 percent. And while melanoma deservedly gets a lot of consideration, doctors believe two other prevalent types of cancer are also connected to sun-less tanning. \"Squamous and basal cell carcinomas are cancers linked to indoor tanning and are far more common than melanoma. They receive less attention since they're less likely to kill,\" Fisher says, \"but treat&amp;amp;#xE2;&amp;amp;#xBF;&amp;amp;#xA2;ment can still involve major surgery and scars.\"\n\n If teens and tanning booths are such a toxic mix, why do 2 million teens nationwide use these machines annually? It's partly because businesses aggressively advertise the supposed benefits of sunbeds. \"The tanning salon industry falsely states that use of a tanning bed is a safe way to get vitamin D,\" says Vilma Cokkinides, Ph.D., a director of risk research at the American Cancer Society. \"But most reasonable diets already provide teens with enough vitamin D, and deficient teens--determined by a simple test from your doctor--can usually be treated with a multivitamin,\" she adds. The good news is the cumulative harm from tanning will diminish over time. \"There's no way to reverse the damage that's been done, but quitting immediately is the only way to minimize health risks,\" Cokkinides says.\n\n It's a message that Meghan, now fully recovered, spreads by volunteering with the Melanoma Foundation of New England and the American Academy of Dermatology. But some teens aren't so lucky. Jaime Regen Rea, from Texas, a frequent sunbed user, spent her school lunch hour secretly tanning at a local salon. At 20, Jaime was diagnosed with melanoma, which she battled for nine years before passing away. \"Jaime wanted a 'killer' tan, and that's exactly what she got,\" says her mother, Donna. \"She would want other girls to know that the 'glow' she got from tanning beds, which she thought was so attractive as a teenager, caused her years of pain, from having large disfiguring scars and losing her hair to needing an oxygen tank to breathe.\" The best advice is to learn to love the skin you're in so that you don't have to change it with sun or tanning beds. Donna adds, \"Jaime's headstone is the harsh reality of what tanning can do to a young woman who was beautiful just the way she was.\" --RICHA GULATI\n\nProtect your skin with these summer essentials &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.teenvogue.com/story/tanning-bed-dangers>