Why is a tan only temporary? What is a tan, anyway?

Answer 1

How Tanning Happens:

The sun's rays contain two types of ultraviolet radiation that reach your skin: UVA and UVB. UVB radiation burns the upper layers of skin (the epidermis), causing sunburns.

UVA radiation is what makes people tan. UVA rays penetrate to the lower layers of the epidermis, where they trigger cells called melanocytes (pronounced: mel-an-oh-sites) to produce melanin. Melanin is the brown pigment that causes tanning.

Melanin is the body's way of protecting skin from burning. Darker-skinned people tan more deeply than lighter-skinned people because their melanocytes produce more melanin. But just because a person doesn't burn does not mean that he or she is also protected against skin cancer and other problems.

Why Do Tans Fade?

Skin takes a lot of wear and tear, so it naturally regenerates itself. Every 35-45 days the outer layer of the skin, the epidermis, is completely replaced. Since skin pigment is found in this upper layer, any natural or added pigment will be sloughed away in about one month's time. This is why natural tans fade and why many self-tanning products recommend you re-apply the product every few days to maintain your tan.

Answer 2

Temporary Tan

Answer 3

Although I am no professional, I would say it is temporary because our skin sheds all the time. That's why we have dandruff and I have heard that a lot of the dust that accumulates around the house is due to dead skin cells floating around and sticking to things. As for my guess with what a tan is, well I am guessing it is from the sun or some other heat source (tanning bed) is cooking your skin, just don't let it cook you too much because than you have sunburn instead.

Answer 4

tan is the skins pigment, a tan is considered healthy
the sun tans the skin and puts vitamin D in the skin to keep our bones healthy
A tan is a sign of good health
It is temporary because winter months comes and the tan fades

Answer 5

that is typhoon season, while it rains that pretend tan is going to bathe away. whether, the place ever you're going only be exterior, the u . s . has some warm climate and being out for like an hour or 2 in the sunlight provides you with a competent tan, and you do no longer even could be on the sea coast lol. i'm in Florida and that is warm as hell, yet besides i think of you're being too ineffective. i be responsive to you're faded yet getting a tan does not make you any diverse o_O... Please do no longer pass to a tan parlor or mattress, it will boost your probabilities of having pores and skin maximum cancers to seventy 5%.

Answer 6

Tan is just a temporary stain on your skin. Ever wear Ice Hair Highlighters? It is just like that! Once your body is exposed to water the color dies down. Every time you have the tanned part of your body exposed to water the color dies down.

Answer 7

Tanning is mostly for people who have a large amount of melanin. Melanin (if you don't already know) Is basically your skins natural sun screen. To be more specific, it comes in two types.. pheomelanin (red) and eumelanin (dark brown to nearly black).


Darked skin people usually have a lot of melanin, therefore, they tan easily as their melanin works on fighting off U-VA radiation, leaving the skin with a nice tan.

Where as us fair skin peoples have smaller amounts of melanin, so it's harder for our skin to fight off the U-VA, leaving us with a reddish color.

That explains a real tan- from the sun.

Now, a fake tan is composed of chemicals which just turn your skin orange. Literally, orange.

Answer 8

It's temporary because it's basically "frying" a layer of your skin. Then everytime you bathe or shower and wash away the dead skin cells, eventually your tan has "faded".

Answer 9

That's the stupidest question ever. A tan is a sign of sun damage. When UVA/UVB rays target the skin, they break down collegen and your skin reacts to being damage so it becomes brown because it uses the melanin to protect itself...but it's not gooood

Answer 10

Because we lose our top layers of skin all the time - otherwise bed mites would starve. Melolin creates the dark pigments that we call tan