Tanning Beds: Addictive?

People who frequent tanning beds experience brain activity during their sessions that mimics the patterns of drug addiction, new research indicates.

The research appearing in the coming issue of the journal Addiction Biology, is the first to actually peer inside the brains of people as they lay in tanning beds and appears to show that frequent exposure to ultraviolet radiation has the potential to become addictive.

“The brain is in fact responding to UV light, and it responds in areas that are associated with reward,” said Dr. Bryon Adinoff, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and an author of the study. “These are areas, particularly the striatum, that we see activated when someone is administered a drug or a high-value food like sugar.”

Despite warnings about skin cancer, tanning remains extremely popular, estimates indicate that nearly 30 million Americans tanning indoors every year, and more than a million visit tanning salons on an average day.

(from New York Times)