“Because vitamin D deficiency has been linked to an increased risk of many common deadly cancers, autoimmune diseases, and cardiovascular disease, tanners may benefit from their tanning experience by decreasing their risk of many serious chronic diseases. Patients with vitamin D deficiency are encouraged to take pharmacologic doses of vitamin D. Typically, these patients receive 50,000 units of vitamin D once a week for 8 weeks and then once every 2 weeks to maintain a healthy vitamin D status. However, there are more than a million children and adults with various intestinal fat malabsorption syndromes who are unable to obtain their vitamin D requirement from dietary or supplemental oral sources. These patients clearly benefit from sensible exposure to sunlight or a lamp source that emits UVB radiation.” — Vitamin D researchers Dr. Michael F. Holick and Dr. Vin Tangpricha, in a reply in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2005 to a letter from dermatology industry lobbyists questioning whether sunbeds were a good source of vitamin D.

“A lot of people don’t know that so many people have difficulty absorbing vitamin D through diet,” Smart Tan Vice President Joseph Levy said. “Dermatology leaders almost never take that into account when suggesting that people can get vitamin D from pills. UV exposure is the natural and biologically intended way to make it.”