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Tanning addiction is a rare syndrome where an individual appears to have a physical or psychological addiction to sunbathing or the use of tanning beds. The mechanism of the addiction is unknown at this time.

Medical evidence
In 2005, a group of dermatologists published a study showing that frequent tanners experience a loss of control over their tanning schedule, displaying a pattern of addiction similar to smokers and alcoholics.

Biochemical evidence indicates that tanning addicts are addicted to an opioid release experienced during tanning. When frequent tanners took an endorphin blocker in a 2006 study, they experienced severe withdrawal symptoms, while infrequent tanners experienced no withdrawal symptoms under the same conditions.

External Causes & Influences of Tanning Addiction
While internal causes (brain activity, chemical changes, etc.) may vary, there are number of traceable external causes and triggers for people who consider themselves "tanorexics" or feel the need to overlook medical opinion and advice for a particular look. The problem is not that tanning addicts are not aware of the issue because Mayer et al.'s findings suggest that adolescent females between the ages of 14 to 17 positively associated the belief that indoor tanning may cause skin cancer with the actual practice of indoor tanning. In other words, this means they are getting exposed to a good amount of health-risk messages on tanning equipments. Found in the same study was the proximity of these adolescents to tanning facilities from their home. Similar to use of addictive substances such as tobacco and alcohol, availability of built-environmental resources has also been linked to healthy or unhealthy behaviors. How readily available the addictive property is to the abuser is a huge factor in how they use it. In other words, how easily a tanning addict can get to a tanning salon effects how frequently he or she will tan.

A number of attitudes affecting cognitive and psychological characteristics associated to this practice can also be named for triggering an addiction for tanning such as decision-making ability, depression, perceived attractiveness, and satisfaction with oneself or one's looks. Meaning, the above factors are all thought processes and attitudes that can trigger a need to go tanning. External social influences greatly increase the prevalence of tanning and the risk that an adolescent may one day be addicted to this practice. Lack of parent knowledge about tanning, parent participation in tanning, low concern for their child tanning, and allowance of child to participate themselves increased the prevalence of indoor tanning to 77.8% from just 8.7% if none of these stated risk factors were present. Parental and caregiver opinion and judgement on this practice has a high influence on this practice.

Tanorexia
Tanorexia is the term often used to describe a condition in which a person participates in excessive outdoor sun tanning or excessive use of other skin tanning methods (such as tanning beds) to achieve a darker skin complexion because they perceive themselves as unacceptably pale. The syndrome is different than tanning addiction, although both may fit into the same syndrome and can be considered a subset of tanning addiction.

Although the term "tanorexia" has been commonly used by the media and several doctors to describe the syndrome, both the word and syndrome have not been widely accepted by the medical community, and is considered slang by many. The term was coined after the medical condition anorexia nervosa, a disorder characterized by low body weight and body image distortion with an obsessive fear of gaining weight. It can be likened to the common practice of adding the suffix "-oholic" (from the term alcoholic) to the end of any action or food someone enjoys extensively and often (e.g., "choc-aholic," "golf-oholic," "shop-aholic," etc.).

Serious cases of tanorexia can be considered dangerous because many of the more popular methods of tanning (such as those mentioned above) require prolonged exposure to UV radiation, which is known to be a cause of many negative side effects, including skin cancer.

Extreme instances may be an indication of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), a mental disorder in which one is extremely critical of his or her physique or self-image to an obsessive and compulsive degree. As it is with anorexia, a person with BDD is said to show signs of a characteristic called distorted body image. In layman's terms, anorexia sufferers commonly believe they are overweight, many times claiming they see themselves as "fat," when in reality, they are nutritionally underweight and physically much thinner than the average person. In the same way, a sufferer of "tanorexia" may believe him or herself to have a much lighter--even a pale--complexion when he or she is actually quite dark-skinned.

Neither tanning addiction nor tanorexia are covered under the latest edition of the DSM-IV, though they are most likely versions of similar problems already on record. To that end, a 2005 article in The Archives of Dermatology presents a case for UV light tanning addiction to be viewed as a type of substance abuse disorder.

Symptoms
Although the syndrome has not been officially described by the medical community, it may include the following reported symptoms: intense anxiety if a session of tanning is missed, competition among peers to see which can get the darkest tan, and chronic frustration about the color of one's skin, with the affected person being convinced his or her complexion is constantly lighter than it actually is.