Actualty I have read and been told that we do need about 20 minutes a day of NATURAL Sunshine to get Vit.D

Oh, I know. But I can't imagine someone saying, "I'm going to go tan in a tanning bed, so that I get vitamin D"

In a way that's interesting. Can you actually get Vitamin D from artificial lights?

Or is the company hoping people will just think "light = D" without thinking of the light's source?

And if the tanning lights don't actually contribute vitamin D, is that false advertising?

OTOH, I've never quite understood how vitamin D could be added to milk, lol.

Maybe they put the cows in a tanning bed, meldy? LOL

I found this article online. Sounds like it was written by a tanning salon owner.

"Tanning beds provide you with a tan which will help keep you safe from the sun when you do go out to be exposed. Instead of needing a sun block, your tanning bed tan will provide the protection you need."

Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/39113

Um, as a red skinned redhead, no it won't be protected without sunscreen, because I NEVER tan.

Okay, I did a teeny-tiny bit of reading. It requires the sun's UV-B rays to hit the skin and sink down to a sub-layer[complicated] provide the vitamin D. (Sunscreen 8+ will block the process.) One needs to be in the sun about 20 mins twice weekly [average spring computation] to provide enough D. If you get more UV-B than that, it's just [gurbled] and not used -- the body is smarter than I am. One can also get D from a number of fishes (many of which I recognized as being on the contaminated list) and from fresh mushrooms if they have been exposed to sunlight for several minutes. In fact, 1/3 cup mushrooms has about 6 times as much D as one needs per day.

Any tanning salon which claims to be UV-free AND provide vitamin D has no truth-in-advertising.

Meanwhile, drink 1 cup D-enriched milk every day to prevent all kinds of nasty things happening to the body. This recommendation is made in spite of the fact that I still don't know how the vitamin D gets into the milk. If you can't stand milk in any form, take a pill which provides 400 IU. Personally, I'm considering D-enriched ice cream as a dietary supplement, especially if it's chocolate.

Thanks for the info meldy.

I'm still giggling at the thought of the cows laid out in the tanning beds. Hehehe!

Oh, Tisha, don't be silly. Of course the cows don't lie around on tanning beds. They have this walk-way thingie that they go on, the udder slips through a big hole in the belt and only the milk producer gets zapped with the tanning rays. They save time by having her feed in a bin in front of her.

Then all the milking personel has to do is to wait for the walk way with the bag sticking through the hole, reach out and grab and squirt. Dairy management at it's finest!! All those TV documentaries showing the tits being squeezed by little mechanical suction pumps are just advertising bull (if you pardon the term) to make you think that the milk you buy has never been touched by humans. Trust me on this...get the milk that is man (or woman) squeezed from a cow that has had her entire udder exposed to a Vitamin D machine....It's like drinking some of your own home made hooch.

Sad = me not knowing if you're being serious or not. LOL

I am so utterly (pun intended) a city girl, that I honestly can't say for sure if what you wrote is true or not. LMAO

Milk is the only dairy product enriched with the type of Vitamin D the body produces. Addition of it to milk has happened in my lifetime. Actually a precursor to the vitamin is added and then the milk is irradiated, just like the precursor is irradiated in animals when sunlight hits it.

You don't even wanna know the source of the precursor, and suffice it to say if you have dietary restrictions to any animal products whatsoever, say on religious or ethical reasons, then you may have an issue with it.

It has been a Godsend, however, for health in developed countries. Fresh, unprocessed milk still has a certain amount of the vitamin in it, as we all do and well, yeah, it happens when the cow is exposed to sunlight. LOL.

Ah, I see. A city gal. Well, it's like this.....the best milk comes from happy contented cows. And of course, we need stuff like sour cream and buttermilk too.

So if you were of the bovine species, and your very personal equipment was being used, would you prefer a nice warm pair of hands, gently stroking, feeling for the sensitive spots, caressing, or would you prefer the zwoup, zwoup, zwoup of a cold metalic suction gizmo that couldn't tell if you were being pleased or were merely putting up with it for something to eat?????

LOLOL. Agnes, cows have teats, it's humans who have those other things.

They do????? my goodness gracious, who'd a'thunk it!

Back in the early 1950's there were sunlamps sold...I think maybe by Sunbeam (makes sense), that were for home use. A couple of college friends brought one over one weekend...my Dad was horrified and treated us to a weekend trip to Panama City FL in January...lol We all wanted tans for the Valentines dance. I remember we still used the lamp back in the dorm and I had a reddened skin to compliment my beautiful red formal. LOL But they were dangerous...one girl overtimed and had a a really bad burn.

Not so dangerous were the self-tanning lotions which arrived in the sixties (?) but they turned your skin orange and reeked...not sure if the odor came from the reaction of the lotion to your skin oils or if you showered more lightly to prevent washing your "tan" off. LOL

Tanning salons are almost as ubiquitous as nail salons around here so somebody must be using them. One ad shows young men climbing into the contraption. josh

Lord luv a duck, y'all.
It would take forever for a person to milk a whole dairy herd by hand not to mention having to dodge a high kicker.
I say run em through the bag & teat washer and hook them up to
the machines, sit down, take a load off your feet and watch that milk flow straight to the holding tank.
Your happy contented cows will exit with a smile and leave you a barnyard full of brown stuff to reward you on their way back to the pasture.

Now back to the tanning bed.
Never been in one, never will.

I'm with ya Jan. Those poor cows need to be relieved of the weight in their udders... the more quickly, cleanly and efficiently, the better.

Tisha, your point that it's ridiculous to tout the alleged health benefits of fake and bake tanning is well-received here. There are no benefits beyond vanity... and even then, I consider it a mis-guided esthetic.

The thought of me visiting a tanning booth is laughable. I don't tan --- I pinken. Plus, as fair as I am, I was on pins and needles when that weird bit of flesh in my decolletage had to be biopsied last month. Why exacerbate it? Whom am I going to impress? Besides, "peaches and cream" (and SPF 45) was plenty good enough to attract Steve in the first place. And having had skin cancers removed himself, he's the last to buy the myth of the "healthy" tan...

As for vitamin D... we're in the season where I can get plenty enough by doing a 15 minute walk around the yard while drinking coffee and pulling a few weeds every morning.

And as a friend, the dermatologist said...."tanning beds cause cancer....period."
And he's in the business....I believe him.
Linda C....AKA Paleface

As another redhead here, I quickly learned during my early childhood that one of those golden tans was not to be my lot in life. And Josh, yes I remember those tanning creams of the 1960's (Tanfastic?) and had the orange legs to prove it.

The claim that any tanning bed could be safe just struck me intuitively as ridiculous. I've stayed far, far away & never go outside in the summer without my SPF 50 on. Guess my vitamin D needs to come from my glass of milk or the vitamin pill.

Hey People!! I was just kidding the City Gal about the virtues of hand milking. I can remember all too well the stuff that managed to find a way to fall into the top of the open bucket while my grandmother milked. We couldn't begin to afford to buy milk if it had to be hand milked.

Being one of those people who has never and will never tan, I've worn sunscreen--at least on my face--year round for the last 30 years and have still dealt with skin cancers popping up. My yearly visit to the dermatologist is next Monday and I anticipate I will have a few places on my body to be "burned off". So, I get my Vitamin D by my one-a day vitamin, plus two calcium tablets fortified with Vit. D., plus an 8 oz. glass of milk -- and am still hard pressed to make sure I'm getting the 1200 I.E. units that seniors over 70 should have! (I just recently read that intriguing bit of information. However, I'm sure it won't be too long till that theory is replaced by another.)

Well, I'm afraid I've half-trashed my skin. I'm the daughter of a red-headed father and a black-haired, dark-skinned mother, and I grew up trying to convince myself that I had more of her skin genes than his. I did use a tanning bed a couple of times in my youth before a couple of vacations. The creepy thing is the way you smell after you use one--it's sort of a bad chemistry smell. Not even as nice as Spam burning in a skillet, but that's as close as I can come to describing it.

All that late-night TV stuff about tanning beds = Vitamin D and getting a tan to avoid a killer burn just sounds like copywriting to me.

BTW, I have used a tanning bed in my life. And I'm sure that I'll pay for it later on (already have lines in my face) so I'm not like putting anyone down who has, I'm just saying that I was young and dumb and didn't care about what happens afterward.

I just think it's really awful that they are actually going the route to make (mostly young girls) think "Hey, they said it's good for me, so I'm going to do it!"