Despite the fact that it can lead to actually amazing models, the sunburn art trend poses great health risk for those who practice it.
Sunburn Art is the latest trend among summer people and it basically implies that a person puts on sunscreen in a shape or model of its choosing and lets the surrounding skin unprotected, so that it gets as tanned as possible. This however leads to sunburns and quite serious ones at that, which effectively puts these people at risk for skin cancer.
The internet is buzzing with people showing off their sunburn art masterpieces, and truth be told, some of them are actually impressive. They range from the very popular batman logo, to a wide variety of flowers and butterflies, of line and dot patterns and basically anything that you would include in a tattoo. This body art process is actually similar to a temporary tattoo, because if maintained properly, it could last for quite some time.
Actually, white ink tattoos have become extremely popular in these last few years and sunburn art actually resembles this type of tattoo to a certain extent. And it has the advantage of being almost free. All you need is sunscreen and some amount of creativity. But while it is not a costly process finance-wise, it does entail some serious costs in terms of the people’s health, because it comes with a significant health risk.
Furthermore, it is a rather painful process in most cases, because, as everybody who fell asleep on the beach knows, sunburns are painful. The inflammation in the skin caused by the exaggerated exposure to the sizzling hot sun leaves the skin very sensitive to all types of contact and this implies quite a bit of pain.
It seems that allowing your skin to get burnt is actually part of the process in this dubious trend. Medical professionals point out that this leads to a phenomenon called photoaging that refers to the outcome of sunbunrs. The skin is left wrinkly and dry and gets an old skin look because of the damage caused by sun.
Sunburns are actually first degree burns and can be quite serious in more complicated cases. This means that there is some amount of scarring left on the skin as part of the healing process and this gives the skin its old look.
However, the biggest risk associated with this body art process is for skin cancer, because leaving certain parts of your body intentionally unprotected and then exposing them to the sun for ridiculously long periods of time is a recipe for disaster, according to medical specialists.
The greatest risk is for developing melanoma, which is a particularly dangerous type of skin cancer, that evolves quickly and that comes with a very low survival rate. Melanoma is a silent killer, because it does not hurt and can only be identified in its initial stages if both the patient and the doctor are extremely careful.
Therefore, this sunburn art entails quite an senseless risk, that is clearly not worth the long term consequences. Somehow, even tattoos that are done in proper sanitary conditions pose lesser risks than this summer fad. And when tattoos are the safe option, that is something worthy of attention.
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