It is now well known that a healthy skin tans better and the reasons of good nutrition and a healthy life-style plus every day care required to help our skin and maintain its condition are just common sense.

Skin also needs to be kept hydrated and plenty fluids are recommended ----water for sure----- as a matter of course. Besides keeping our skin cells in good condition, fluids actually help in the transportation of nutrients around our bodies to areas where they are needed. Hydrated skin reaches and maintains a darker tan if this is desired. If skin is dry and neglected the UV rays tend to reflect off the skin. This doesn’t help to get the tanning underneath which is necessary to achieve a better and deeper, more long lasting tan Exfoliation happens more quickly in neglected skin too and the tan therefore fades easily.

Tanning accelerators are a great help to us in providing us with natural ingredients to aid and nourish----vital vitamins, botanical oils, and all the high quality tanning lotions we see today are the accumulation of sincere care and attention over the years from the tanning cosmetics industry to produce and to keep on producing excellent standards in tanning care to suit a wide range of skin needs.

Although we all may tan indoors or out these days, not all of us get the same deep tan. All of us have the same number of pigment cells which are those cells---melanocytes--- which produce the pigment melanin. The natural skin colour though depends on the size and the number of those pigment grains. That is why dark skinned people have more pigment grains and larger ones, than fairer skinned people. This is all genetically determined.

With people who do have the ability to tan, being able to stimulate the melanocytes produces more pigment grains and this is achieved by UV of course. This is the way our skin gets darker by whichever way you wish to define darker for yourself. The melanocytes actually need protein Tyrosine. This is a basic building block of the melanin molecule. That’s why this important nutrient is added to some tanning creams and lotions. Some products also contain vitamin B as well as tyrosine and this helps strengthen the effect of tyrosine conversion to melanin. If an enzyme lecithin is added this recognizes damage to our skin caused by the rays and stimulates the production of melanin which again is the protective factor which we all like because of the tan it gives us

This is all quite interesting I find, and helps me to appreciate the way accelerators work on and in the skin and how nutritious they are.