If You Still Use Tanning Beds in 2025, Watch This.

Just don't use them. Tanning beds and melanoma risk. This isn't a lifestyle debate anymore. It's a cancer risk with a number attached to it. A new study published in Science Advances finds that people who use tanning beds are nearly three times. That means 300% more likely to develop melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. Researchers examine medical records from about 3,000 tanning bed users and compared them to non users of similar age. After adjusting for factors like sunburn history and family risk, melanoma showed up in 5% of tanning bed users compared to 2% of non users. The study also explains why. By sequencing skin biopsies, researchers found that tanning bed users melanocytes, the cells that form moles, and had nearly double the DNA mutations, even compared with much older people who never used tanning beds. The takeaway from doctors is blunt. This is preventable cancer driven by an avoidable habit. Okay, what's the real message here? It's 2025. If you're still using a tanning bed, you're basically insane. You've got 300% the chance of getting melanoma, and, yeah, that's the cancer that kills you. Let's dig a little deeper here. Now, it is interesting to me that places like Australia. What's with these Australians trying to help people from just needlessly killing themselves? First guns, now tanning beds? Australia and Brazil ban tanning beds outright. Now, this may confuse some. Brazil? I thought that was the fun party. People always have perfect tans. Well, they might have perfect tans, but it's not from tanning beds. It's. It's. That's just the nature of their skin. Look, I'm not saying everybody has to look like me. If you don't like pale, pasty, white skin like mine, okay, fine. Use a spray tan, please. Not the same brand used in the White House because orange doesn't look like a tan. But use makeup. Use something. Now, I am of that generation when people were taught, oh, get. Get a tan. Put baby oil on. Get a nice healthy base tan. Turns out none of those things are accurate. There's no such thing as a healthy tan. It's all sun damage. It's all skin damage at some level. So let's go over some more basic facts on these situations. 80% of melanomas are tied to UV exposure. Melanoma kills 60,000 people a year. That's how many died in 2022 from melanoma. So this is a big, big killer. You know, people Are worried about, oh, I don't want to go swimming in the ocean. A shark might get me. Well, like two people a year die from sharks. 60,000 people die from melanoma. So it needs to be taken very seriously. UK and France ban use for people under 18. So different regulatory environments around the world is pointed out. Some countries just flat out ban them, which I think is kind of nice. Now, sure, you can make the case that people have the right to do dangerous things. Am I really in favor of banning smoking at this stage? No. That would cause a massive, massive underground market for that. But very few people are bothered by the fact that we ban 13 year olds from buying cigarettes or 15 year olds or even 17 year olds. Certainly there should be restrictions. Currently, rules vary state by state. Here's the big message for you. Realize nobody cares about you living a long, healthy life as much as you do. It's up to you to really filter out these distractions. We live in a culture where we're told if you don't look really beautiful at all times, you're essentially not a worthwhile person. And part of beauty in modern culture is having the perfect tan. Well, I'm telling you now, don't buy into it. If you want to look like you have a perfect tan, get a spray tan. That they don't all have to look as bad as, you know who in D.C. get a spray tan. Now, I will confess this has probably been 20 years. I think I was going out to the Hamptons at a summer share and I wanted to look cool. I did get a summer or a spray tan. I didn't. I went to a tanning salon, but it was not using the typical radiation that they did, the UV light. It was having a spray and they put you in this thing and you spray up and down. And it didn't look bad, but it didn't look great. I think I only did it once or twice. These tanning beds. I remember once, it was in a mansion in Manhattan and somebody had a tanning bed. It was at Bob Guccione's gigantic mansion. No, it wasn't one of his wild penthouse parties. It was a launch party for a health magazine. And I was wandering around this fabulous, fabulous mansion in New York City with fireplaces taller than I am. There was a room with a swimming pool and there was his tanning bed. And Bob Guccioni famously had this dark, dark, dried, leathery skin. Have to assume it was from the tanning bed. He's no longer with us, by the way. I don't think here is a state would mind me saying that talking out of school. So the real message for you is you got to filter out these messages telling you do something for the short term that will make you look good. If long term it makes you look worse. Why would you want to do it now? Do I occasionally go to the beach or the pool? Yes. But I completely cover myself with sunscreen and people make fun of me. My own family makes fun of me because I've got typically very heavy coat of white zinc sunscreen and it makes me look like a ghost. But you know what? I don't care. What I care about is making it to 100. And yeah, maybe by then I'll be the best looking 100 year old in the neighborhood. Maybe I'll be the only one. I'm not going to be the best looking person at my current age because, well, you can see. Plus I'm not going to get a big tan from a tanning salon. So please realize, in a free market, a free society, people are going to be marketing all sorts of products to you. They don't really care if it kills you or not. You have to take care of your own own body. Ultimately, no one cares about your health more than you.