We all want our skin to look healthy and fit and many feel that the only way to achieve results like that is to tan. While there are a variety of sunless tanning products out there that produce great tans (no more orange faces), many people will still opt for the old fashioned beach chair approach or visit a tanning parlor to spend some time under a UV lamp.

If you’ve decided to tan either in direct sunlight or in a tanning bed or booth, you may want to consider a tan accelerator. Tanning accelerators, or tan promoters as they are also called, are products that can speed up your tanning process to give you more color with less time spent in the sun or in the booth.

How Do they Work?

In order to understand how tanning accelerators work, we first need to understand how our skin naturally reacts to the sun.

When exposed to UV rays, your skin produces a pigment protein called melanin as a protective measure. The more you expose yourself to UV (whether indoors or out), the more melanin your skin produces and the darker your skin will become. Of course when your exposure to UV rays is greater than what the melanin in your skin can handle, you can develop a sunburn – bad news no matter which side of the sun or sunless tanning debate you’re on.

Tanning accelerators are designed to increase your body’s natural production of melanin and are typically sold as either topical lotions or pills. Although there are a variety of tanning accelerators on the market, most of them include one or perhaps both of the following ingredients:

Psoralen is extracted from citrus oil and other plant substances. In fact, it is commonly found in limes (and yes, lime juice applied to the skin can help you tan faster, but that’s a lot of limes). Psoralen is an amino acid that stimulates the pigment cells in your skin to produce more melanin when exposed to the UV rays. The result – you can quickly develop a tan with much less time spent in the sun or under the lamp.

Tyrosine is another amino acid sometimes added to tan accelerators to stimulate melanin production. Like psoralen, it is also a building block for melanin, but its use in this capacity has not been as well researched or documented.

Are they Safe?

The concept behind tanning accelerators is to maximize the results you achieve while minimizing the amount of time you need to spend exposed to UV light. The downside is that using a sunscreen in conjunction with them slows their effectiveness, so many users opt to tan unprotected. And so far as the ingredients are concerned, neither psoralen nor tyrosine are FDA-approved when used in this capacity. Also keep in mind that psoralen increases your skin’s sensitivity to light, so you should carefully consider your options before choosing to use a tanning accelerator.

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