I have a confession to make.  I’m not an advocate of going to tanning booths.  Usually. I’m getting married in Las Vegas though, and my vanity has overcome my common sense that I’ve  had for so many years after my younger years of baking myself in the sun and the tanning booths, seeing the damage that the sun exposure did to my skin, and also not having the best of luck in our family with skin cancer, it really was the right choice for  me to forego the majority of sun exposure, except a little healthy vitamin D exposure here and there.

In my quest to get a healthier tan for my wedding, and to not burn, and help ensure that my body was fully prepped to actually tan instead of burn, I started to look online to see if there was a such thing as supplements that I could take that would help prep my skin for tanning instead of activating burning, which is known as being a primary cause behind many of the most serious forms of skin cancer.

So, I found a supplement called Tan-Aid. It’s a supplement that includes several key ingredients, which the company claims, and many other sites have claimed, may help your body manufacture more melanocytes, which are the underlying organisms which form melanin, the substance in your skin’s outer layers that are responsible for how dark you can get from UV exposure.  The more melanin you have, the darker your skin color will be.

For example, the reason that skin cancer is much less common in dark skinned people like african americans and those of latin descent, is because they have more melanin (pigment) in their skin, which helps them to not only tan darker with sun exposure, but which also helps to protect them from burning and protect them from the sun’s burning rays. 

The ingredients in Tan-Aid that they say help you to make more melanin essentially, and help to protect your skin against burning are : Tyrosine, which is effectively an amino acid that is supposedly one of the precursors to melanin production.  Vitamin E is another one, and this one helps in the production of melanocytes and it also helps to maintain suppleness and moisture, so it helps your skin to stay smooth and healthy when tanning.  You know how tanning can really drain your skin of moisture….

Copper, which is a precursor to collagen and melanin is also included, and then there are a few other ingredients as well, but these are the main, most active ones that are going to allow you to achieve a tan.  I bought three bottles at a pretty reasonable price, and I think there really is something to it. Not only am I getting darker than I normally do, but I’m not as prone to burning, which has been great.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 6:03 am and is filed under Natural and Herbal Treatments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.