How sunbathing every other day impacts skin colour

Turns out, sunbathing every other day boost melanin levels, a chemical that gives skin colour, the Daily Mail reported.

Giving skin tissue a day to recover from the rays helps give the skin the most colour.

You tan when your skin is exposed to ultraviolet light produced by the sun and other visible light. High-energy radiation has an impact on skin cells in two ways:

- The immune system triggers a response that repairs damage done to DNA and protects the unguarded layers by multiplying the skin cells.

- The second way is to produce a brown-to-black pigment, which is melanin in the hair, eyes and it tans the skin.

Researchers recently learned the benefits of giving your skin a break from the strong rays, after studying human skin cells and mice exposed to ultraviolet light for different amounts of time.

"The damaging effects of high doses of ultraviolet rays are known, but we were curious to see the effect of exposure frequency on skin," senior author Professor Carmit Levy, a molecular geneticist at Tel Aviv University, told the Daily Mail.

Adding, “It turns out that, if you are going out daily to the beach, you might be interfering with the natural scheduling and synchronising of the skin protection systems."

So before you right out to get a sunbath, think about if you should wait a day.

The findings were originally published in the journal Molecular Cell.