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" For most of her life, Addie Hobbs&amp;#039;s naturally pale skin had rarely seen the sun. But once in a while, during high school, when she&amp;#039;d had an event she really wanted to look good for\u2014like her high school prom\u2014she&amp;#039;d squeeze in about 10 tanning-bed sessions. For a few summers, she had been a lifeguard at the pool in her rural Pennsylvania town. In college, she&amp;#039;d hit the tanning bed for special occasions\u2014before a dance, a party, or her graduation photo. &amp;quot;At the time, I didn&amp;#039;t think it was a big deal, because I wasn&amp;#039;t going all the time,&amp;quot; she says. Hobbs&amp;#039;s mom had sent her for annual skin checks from a young age, wary of her daughter&amp;#039;s fair complexion and her odd-looking moles, known as dysplastic nevi, which are typically benign. After college, Hobbs realized she hadn&amp;#039;t seen a dermatologist in about three years. She scheduled an exam: Out of eight moles biopsied, one came back a melanoma\u2014the most dangerous form of skin cancer. Within three weeks, Hobbs went under the knife. &amp;quot;Despite the local anesthetic, I could feel the cutting, pulling, tugging, and pressure on my skin,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;It was awful.&amp;quot; She was left with a nearly 4-inch long and half-inch wide scar across her right shoulder blade and doctor&amp;#039;s orders to get full-body skin checks every three months for nearly two years after. She now gets checked every six months to look for any recurrence of the potentially fatal cancer. As a melanoma survivor, she&amp;#039;s also at risk for cancers of the eye, mouth, and genitals and possibly for breast cancer. Hobbs got her diagnosis at 24 years old. What is Binge Tanning?  Melanoma used to turn up mostly in older adults, people who had spent a lifetime in the sun. But in recent years, research shows the disease has become an epidemic among women ages 18 to 39, many of whom, like Hobbs, only tanned here and there. And doctors say it could actually be the &amp;quot;just before something special&amp;quot; behavior that has caused a nearly 800 percent increase in diagnoses in the past 40 years in this alarmingly young age bracket. How could a handful of bikini-clad summers and a few tanning-bed cram sessions end up causing cancer? &amp;quot;When you get sporadic yet very intense UV exposure, it causes an extreme insult to DNA, which is believed to initiate the malignant changes in cells that can lead to melanoma,&amp;quot; says Susan Swetter, MD, professor of dermatology at the Stanford Cancer Institute. &amp;quot;Once those DNA mutations occur, your cells are even more susceptible to the long-term carcinogenic effects of UV light over the course of your life. The damage accumulates.&amp;quot; Recent studies show even one trip to a tanning salon can cause irrevocable damage\u2014morphing healthy DNA in skin cells beyond repair and increasing your risk for melanoma by nearly 2 percent with each visit. Plus, tanning has been linked to such non-melanoma skin cancers as squamous- and basal-cell carcinoma, conditions that, if left untreated, can be lethal (the messed-up DNA can damage skin cells, causing melanoma). Lie in a bed six times in a year while in high school or college\u2014to, say, get a pre-vacay base tan\u2014and your risk for basal-cell carcinoma increases by 73 percent. In fact, prepping for a beach trip by bingeing on tanning-salon visits is every bit as dangerous\u2014perhaps even more so\u2014as baking on a lounge chair outside. Any sunshine, both UVA and UVB rays, is carcinogenic. And tanning beds expose you to more rays, period: Compared to the noon sun, bulbs in tanning beds emit about 12 times as much UVA and two times the amount of UVB. &amp;quot;Tanning beds are designed to get people tan more quickly than would be the case from the same amount of time in the sun,&amp;quot; says Vernon K. Sondak, MD, head of the cutaneous-oncology department at the Moffitt Cancer Center. &amp;quot;So they must provide a higher intensity exposure to UV light.&amp;quot; So it shouldn&amp;#039;t be a surprise that the skin-cancer risk from tanning beds turns out to be twice that of Mediterranean sunlight, a study in the British Journal of Dermatology found. &amp;quot;The tanning-bed industry has long promoted the concept that tanning beds give a safe and healthy tan because they don&amp;#039;t allow as much of a burn,&amp;quot; Dr. Swetter says. &amp;quot;But that&amp;#039;s a complete fallacy if you look at the science.&amp;quot; What makes a tan irresistible?  Who wouldn&amp;#039;t love to look 10 pounds thinner and have zero cellulite? Okay, maybe that&amp;#039;s an exaggeration, but you&amp;#039;re not crazy if you feel that way. A darker skin tone reflects light off skin evenly and can give an insta-skinny illusion. Plus, your teeth and eyes look brighter when offset with a tan. Pale skin may have been beautiful a century ago, but watch any awards show or open any celebrity weekly and there&amp;#039;s no question where society stands today. Tan is beautiful. And even those born with naturally dark skin feel the lure of the sun. While less likely to have melanoma than those with fair complexions, they are more apt to get a late diagnosis of the lethal form and die from the disease. Tanning-bed makers and salons, just like the cigarette conglomerates before them, make sure teens hear their message as early as possible, seemingly looking to bring in girls at a young age by offering unlimited memberships for as little as $10 a month. When you move on to college, they keep you hooked with cheapie spring-break specials, two-for-one deals, and campus-adjacent locations. In one study of college students, more than half used tanning beds, according to the Archives of Dermatology. Of those who tanned, 22 percent met the definition of an addict, and most said they attempted to cut back but couldn&amp;#039;t. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s possibly the cruelest joke that the most common carcinogen in the world could be addictive,&amp;quot; says David Fisher, MD, PhD, head of dermatology at Massachusetts General Hospital and cochair of the Melanoma Research Foundation&amp;#039;s scientific advisory committee. For Alison Vinciguerra, 27, this sounds familiar. She was diagnosed with melanoma in situ (when it&amp;#039;s in its early stage but requires immediate action) at 23. She had two precancerous moles removed\u2014one between her breasts, the other on her stomach. &amp;quot;When I was in high school, I didn&amp;#039;t drink or smoke. Tanning was my vice,&amp;quot; she says. In college on the East Coast, Vinciguerra found a tanning salon near her school and would pop in during the weeks leading up to a Vegas getaway with girlfriends or a big event and once in a while when she was stressed out, blue, or had her period. &amp;quot;A few minutes here and there and I would instantly feel better,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I loved the warmth. In some ways, I felt addicted.&amp;quot; Actually, she might have been. Frequent use of tanning beds showed increased activity in the reward center of the brain, an effect similar to that of heroin, cocaine, gambling, sex, and alcohol, researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center have found. When people lay on tanning beds with the UV light secretly filtered, they did not feel the same effect. But if you only tan occasionally, you&amp;#039;re not addicted, right? Not necessarily. &amp;quot;The more one takes part in a potentially addictive behavior, the more risk there is of its developing into an addiction. So someone who only tans for an event could run more of a risk of developing an addiction than someone who never tans,&amp;quot; says Bryon Adinoff, MD, professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. He notes that a follow-up study to monitor the dopamine release in infrequent tanners is in the works. Regardless, you don&amp;#039;t have to be hooked for the habit to be deadly\u2014just as social smoking still causes cancer. &amp;quot;If instead of smoking a pack a day, someone decided to save time by smoking the whole pack at once, we wouldn&amp;#039;t be surprised to see that person have a lot more health problems. So why should we be shocked that cramming a whole season&amp;#039;s worth of ultraviolet exposure into a few sessions is extra damaging?&amp;quot; says Dr. Sondak. The message from derms: If you&amp;#039;ve binged in the past, get to know your skin from head to toe, and ask a doctor to check you out if anything changes, says Ellen Marmur, MD, an associate professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in NYC. And from now on, if you love the look of a tan for a special night, do what many models and celebrities do\u2014fake it. &amp;quot;Looking back, the fact that I put my health in jeopardy\u2014for what? a couple of hours at a party or for a photo?\u2014is unbelievable to me,&amp;quot; says Hobbs, who is almost at her five-year cancer-free mark. &amp;quot;When I see pictures of myself from those events, it&amp;#039;s painful to think where I was then and the mind-set I was in. If I knew then what I know now, I would have never set foot in a tanning salon.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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