In the dark comedy TV series "Breaking Bad," mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher Walter White, who's discovered he has lung cancer and wants to provide for his family after he's gone, decides to set up a meth lab in a used Winnebago. Walt soon discovers that selling drugs to meth addicts isn't as simple as he'd assumed, despite their craving for his product. While the premise might not have been as comical, if Walt had wanted to find a legal way to profit from a dangerous addiction, he could have instead started another business -- a tanning salon. You heard that right. True, tanning fiends generally don't shoplift and burglarize homes to subsidize their habits. But obsessive pursuit of the perfect golden-brown tan can ruin your health and even ultimately kill you, though the fatal skin cancers caused by excessive exposure to the sun can take years to develop. Moreover, growing scientific evidence shows that tanners develop a milder version of the drug addict's and alcoholic's desire for their poison -- similar to an eating disorder sufferer's obsession with being skinny.
Scientists have even coined the term "tanorexia" to denote tanning addiction. A 2006 study by Wake Forest University researchers found that exposure to UV radiation increases your body's production of endorphins, brain chemicals that have a morphinelike effect -- masking pain and producing a euphoric feeling. When researchers gave frequent tanners an opoid-blocking medication, it reduced their desire to lie in UV-spewing tanning beds. Studies suggest that compulsive tanning is startlingly widespread, particularly among teens and people in their early twenties. A 2008 study of Virginia college students by researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center concluded that 27 percent had symptoms of dependence upon tanning that were similar to symptoms in alcohol and drug-addicted people. The tanning addicts who showed an increasing craving for more and more UV exposure had difficulty controlling their time in the sun or their use of tanning beds, even though they knew its potentially harmful effects on their skin. While natural sunlight held a more powerful allure than the artificial kind, about 40 percent of the tanning addicts used tanning beds, which enabled them to get their fix even on cloudy days. The Fox Chase researchers found that those addicted to tanning were also more likely to be excessively thin and smoke cigarettes than other students. This research is significant because it suggests that UV junkies may have the same sort of mental problem -- that is, a brain genetically predisposed to addiction -- that drug addicts have. For more information on tanning, check into the links on the next page. Gardner, Amanda. "Addicted to tanning beds? It's Possible, Study Suggests." HealthDay.
How we come together when we can’t go very far. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share. We walk the dogs across the meadow in the rain. We don’t talk much. We say the same things over and over, and yet somehow there’s comfort in the repetition. Yesterday someone wrote on the town listserv that certain dog owners had been spotted in the meadow less than six feet away from each other. Suddenly, everybody’s a cop, yardsticks in their minds. People are scared, and with good reason. But distance - the idea of distance. Were we so close to begin with? How far will we be from each other after this is over? The dogs, off leash, circle back to us. I’ve got the sense they know what’s going on, if not the particulars. But something is most definitely up. For starters, how come we’re all home all the time? This po st has been written by GSA Content Generator Demoversion.
Other rituals emerge, some old, some new. Sitting on the porch in Phoenix. Picking the citrus trees of once-anonymous neighbors in Los Angeles. The poles are built-in social distancing. No need for Art the measuring tape. Below are 13 American scenes, snapshots of neighbors finding original ways to reconnect. It’s good to walk in this rain. I’m not saying everything has become so precious these strange days. Only that you notice more, how the winter grass comes in so many shades of brown, the netless soccer goals upside down like lonely parallelograms (badly, I try and teach my kid math). And the way our talk goes nowhere but even empty words have a little more weight now, like the stones we throw when we pause at the brook. Peter Orner, from Norwich, Vt. Michele Grey began noticing them in early April: citrus trees ripe for the picking but out of arm’s reach. They studded front lawns and backyards in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, where Ms. Grey, 53, has lived for 20 years, and which she, her husband, Joaquin, and son, Lucas, have been exploring on daily walks since stay-at-home orders closed many local parks and trails.