健康和健康对我们每个人的触摸都不同。这是一个人的故事。
皮肤科医生说：“您的祖先生活在地牢中。”
I was laying fully naked with my back against a cold metal exam table. He held one of my ankles with two hands, squinting closely at a mole on my calf.
I was 23 and fresh off a three-month trip to Nicaragua where I’d been working as a surf instructor. I’d been cautious of the sun but I still came back with stark tan lines, my freckled body nowhere near its normal pallor.
At the end of the appointment, after I’d redressed, he looked at me with sympathy and exasperation. “Your skin can’t handle the amount of sun you’re exposing it to,” he said.
I can’t remember what I said back, but I’m sure it was tempered with youthful arrogance. I’d grown up surfing, immersed in the culture. Being tan was just a part of life.
That day, I was still too stubborn to admit my relationship with the sun was deeply troubling. But I was on the precipice of a larger shift in my mindset. At 23, I was finally beginning to understand that I alone was responsible for my health.
Which is what led me to book the aforementioned appointment with the dermatologist to have my many moles checked — the first in my adult life. And in the four years since, I’ve transitioned — unenthusiastically at times, I’ll admit — into a fully-reformed tanner.
I got hooked on tanning because of a lack of education, but it persisted due to a stubborn avoidance, if not flat out rejection, of evidence-based facts. So this one goes out to all you tanning fanatics who just can’t quit the habit. When was the last time you asked yourself: Is it really worth the risk?
我和父母一起长大了晒黑，他们买了一个大众市场的想法，即没有铜牌就没有美丽。
As the legend goes, in the 1920s fashion icon Coco Chanel came back from a Mediterranean cruise with a dark tan and sent pop culture, which had pretty much always valued pale complexions, into a frenzy. And Western civilization’s obsession with the tan was born.
在50年代和60年代，冲浪文化成为主流，棕褐色的炒作变得更加极端。棕褐色不仅是美丽的，而且是对身体的颂歌，也是对保守主义的挑战。南加州是我两个父母的前家，都是零地面。
我父亲于1971年在洛杉矶以外的高中毕业，同年，一位古铜色的马里布芭比娃娃（Malibu Barbie）首映，穿着泳衣和太阳镜准备海滩。我妈妈在少年时代度过了夏天，在威尼斯海滩周围狂欢。
If they did use防晒霜or take precautionary sun measures in those days, it was only enough to ward off serious burns — because I’ve seen the photos, and their bodies glowed copper.
However, the obsession with tan skin didn’t end with my parent’s generation. In many ways, it only got worse. The bronzed look remained popular through the 90s and early 2000s, and tanning technology only seemed to get more advanced. Thanks totanning beds, you didn’t even have to live near a beach.
2007年,E !释放日落,真人秀that centered around a tanning salon in LA. In the surf magazines I devoured as a teen, every page showed a different — though inevitably Caucasian — model with browned, impossibly smooth skin.
So I, too, learned to revere that sun-kissed glow. I loved how when my skin was darker, my hair seemed to look blonder. When I was tan, my body even appeared more toned.
模仿我妈妈，我会在我们的前院用橄榄油从头到脚，我的盎格鲁 - 撒克逊皮肤像煎锅一样嘶嘶作响。大多数时候，我什至不喜欢它。但是我忍受了汗水和无聊的结果。
I sustained this lifestyle by sticking to a guiding principle: I was safe as long as I didn’t get burned. Skin cancer, I believed, was avoidable as long as I tanned in moderation.
Dr. Rita Linkner is a dermatologist atSpring Street Dermatologyin New York City. When it comes to tanning, she’s unequivocal.
她说：“没有一种安全的晒黑方法。”
She explains that because sun damage is cumulative, every bit of sun exposure our skin receives increases our risk forskin cancer。
“When UV light hits the surface of the skin it creates free radical species,” she says. “If you accumulate enough free radicals, they start to affect how your DNA replicates. Eventually, the DNA will replicate abnormally and that’s how you get precancerous cells that can, with enough sun exposure, turn into cancerous cells.”
我现在不容易承认这一点，但是我一直晒黑成年的原因之一是因为直到几年前，我怀有怀疑主义的怀疑 - 从一家天然食材的家庭中长大，才归功于现代医学。
Essentially, I didn’t want to stop tanning. So I leveraged the vague, unarticulated distrust I felt toward science to create a world that suited me better — a world where tanning wasn’t that bad.
My journey to fully accept modern medicine is a different story, but it was this shift in thinking that accounted for my eventual awakening about the realities of skin cancer. The statistics are just too overwhelming to avoid.
例如,9,500人are diagnosed with skin cancer every day. That’s roughly 3.5 million people a year. In fact, more people are diagnosed with skin cancer than all other cancers combined and almost90 percent在所有皮肤癌中，都是由阳光暴露引起的。
While many forms of skin cancer can be thwarted by early intervention, melanoma accounts for around20 deaths a day在美国。Linkner说：“在所有致命类型的癌症中，黑色素瘤在该清单上都很高。”
When I read down the list of risk factors for developing skin cancer, I’m able to check off most of the boxes: blue eyes and blond hair, a history of sunburns, lots of moles.
While Caucasian people have the highest risk of developing all types of skin cancer, they also have thebest rate of survival。According to one study, people of African American descent werefour times more likely to receive a melanoma diagnosis after it had progressed to a life-threatening stage. It’s imperative that regardless of ethnicity or phenotype you have your body checked regularly (Linkner suggests once a year) for precancerous and cancerous growths.
For me, perhaps the scariest stat is that exactly one blistering sunburn as a child or teen
I honestly can’t say how manyblistering sunburnsI got as a kid but it’s a lot more than one.
Often times, this information can overwhelm me. After all, I can’t do anything about the uninformed choices I made as a young person. Linkner assures me, however, that it’s not too late to turn things around.
她说：“如果您开始纠正[皮肤护理]习惯，即使在30岁时，您也可以限制以后生活中的皮肤癌的机会。”
“Depending on what your skin type is, the sweet spot is somewhere between 30 and 50 SPF,” says Linkner. “If you’re blue-eyed, blonde-haired, and freckly, go with a 50 SPF. And, ideally, you’re applying 15 minutes before sun exposure.”
She also suggests using physical blocker sunscreens — products where the active ingredient is either zinc oxide or titanium dioxide — over chemical sunscreen.
“[Physical blockers] are a way of completely reflecting the UV light off the surface of the skin as opposed to absorbing it into the skin,” she says. “And if you’re allergy-prone or have eczema you’re much better off using the physical blockers.”
In addition to daily sunscreen use, I’ve become a zealot about wearing hats.
小时候，我憎恶帽子，因为我妈妈总是在我的脑海里放一些稻草的东西。但是，作为一个新意识的人，我开始尊重一顶好帽子的价值。即使我也戴着防晒霜，我也感到更加安全，知道自己的脸被阳光直射遮挡。
澳大利亚政府列出了戴着宽边帽子的重要的预防措施in limiting sun exposure. (Although, they emphasize the necessity of also wearing sunscreen as skin still absorbs indirect sunlight.)
On those rare days when I do get stuck out and about without a hat or sunscreen, I inevitably wake up the next day and look in the mirror and think “Why do I look so good today?” Then I realize: Oh, I’m tan.
I haven’t lost my superficiality or the-tanner-the-better mindset in that regard. I’ll probably always prefer how I look when I’m a little bronzed.
但是对我来说，超越青春期的一部分 - 这种心态可能比实际年龄更长的时间 - 正在采取清醒，理性的方法来解决我的健康。
I may not have had the right information as a kid, but I have it now. And honestly, there’s something deeply empowering about taking action in order to make a positive change in my life. I like to think of it as a way of honoring the inconceivable good fortune I have at being alive at all.
Ginger Wojcik是助理编辑Greatist。Follow more of her work on中等的或跟随她推特。