Tanning while pregnant is a big no-no. If it happens that you are a tanning enthusiast who regularly visits a tanning salon, you will have to forego this for the meantime if you are currently pregnant. Researches on pregnancy have consistently yielded results that those tanning beds used in tanning salons can put great amounts of risk for your baby during pregnancy. Even dermatologists would advise you against it and ask you to stay away from tanning during your pregnancy. The main reason for this is that tanning beds produce two types of ultraviolet or UV rays which are both harmful to the skin—UVA and UVB. In normal cases, these can be regulated on the skin and absorbed.
But if you are pregnant, you would not want to come across the risks that these UV rays can bring. Normally you will expose yourself and your skin in increased amounts of heat when you go off tanning. This is of course important and inevitable if you wanted to get that bronzed look. However, you will not notice it at first but the rays which give you the desired tan lines will not always be healthy for you. After all, these are still UV rays. They penetrate deep within the skin and little by little, they cause skin aging and other detrimental effects. This is also the reason why you should not undergo tanning that often.
When you undergo tanning during pregnancy, you also put pressure on your baby because you subject him or her to increased levels of temperature. You also inevitably expose the baby to the harmful UV rays as they penetrate into your womb. You might have also heard about the fact that pregnant women are advised against undergoing a hot bath. The same principle is applied to tanning when pregnant. Your baby’s growth is put to harm when the body undergoes an increased temperature that is well beyond normal. When you undergo bodily overheating, you can lead to naturally decrease the folic acid in your body. This particular nutrient is essential during the physical and mental development of your baby inside of you.
During pregnancy, you can also observe that your skin becomes more sensitive. This is because the food that you intake and the nutrients you receive are now being divided between your body and your baby. In this case, your body may produce less to sustain you. If you subject yourself to tanning while you are pregnant, you can become more susceptible in acquiring skin diseases even as major as that of cancer. Moreover, skin discoloration and unwanted pigmentation can also occur on your body’s skin. Aside from this, you can also become more susceptible to sun or heatstroke when you do it while you are pregnant.
However, there are still some experts who say that tanning can still be permissible when pregnant. But if this must be done, the pregnant women must drink lots of water or limit the session to a maximum of ten minutes only.
