anning solutions with high DHA content are all the rage. Just like the number of blades on your razor, the alleged DHA percentage of tanning solutions keeps going up and up. If one company brings out a 14% DHA, the next company will bring out 16%. When 16% becomes old news, 18% comes out. What are we at now? 20% plus?
Why darker tanning solutions simply cannot work:
The truth of the matter is, no solution is viably able to go above the 12-14% mark. Tanning solution is made up of two vital ingredients - DHA (your active tanning ingredient), and pigments. Unfortunately, the two don't get on. As soon as you mix the two together in a bottle, they begin to fight, and the energy they are constantly using in this battle slowly begins to degrade the quality of your solution (and this is why if you've ever kept a bottle of solution for too long, the pigmentation in it turns green, and the DHA is weakened so much that you will not get a tan).
At 12% and below, this degradation process happens slowly enough so as to preserve the solution at sufficient quality to deliver a perfect tan for around 6 months from opening (provided proper storage procedures are followed). But at 20%, the shelf life of the solution is so dramatically reduced so as to degrade the quality of the tan almost immediately. Have you ever tried asking an 18% or 20% user about their tan's fade-off and lasting power, for example?
What many tanning companies don't want you to know...
Another reason for darker tans' poor staying power is the simple but relatively unknown fact that nobody’s skin can absorb much more than 10% DHA content anyway. Higher percentage solutions just rely on excessive guide colour to give you that "wow, this tan is so dark" impression. But after a couple of showers when the guide colour is washed away, you are left with a dramatic drop-off of colour.
"But my friend so and so swears by her bottle of 18%... "
Of course, you will always find people who are absolutely convinced by their bottle of 16%, 18% or 20% solution. The phenomenal power of a placebo effect is observed in just about every walk of life - tell someone something will make them look or feel a certain way, and there's a higher than chance probability that it will. And there may be nothing wrong with that per se. If the technician believes in it, and her or his clients believe in it, then what's the big deal, right?
Unfortunately, the law may be about to change all of this. The latter half of 2012 may well see the introduction of new legislation which begins to limit the freedom of tanning companies to sell products which treat people’s skin with unnecessary and ineffective doses of chemicals. The SCCS has already published its report, which deems any tanning solution higher than 14% potentially unsafe (and any tanning cream greater than 10%), and this may well become law within the next two years.
How much further will the climb towards the most chemically-filled solution on the market continue until that day? Nothing would surprise me.
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