Almost everyone loves a good drink, but everyone loves a good spray tan; many companies try to combine the two. I know! At first I was excited too: just open your mouth and get your spray-tan-drink on! Unfortunately it isn’t the right alcohol, and even more unfortunate is that alcohol can drastically affect your spray tan.
1. Dries out the skin
Here’s a quick bit of logic for you: Alcohol can leave your skin very dry. Very dry skin sheds its layers faster. The faster your skin sheds its layers, the faster your spray tan will fade. Not too hard to figure out why alcohol isn’t great for a spray tan.
2. Is itchy and irritating
As a result of leaving your skin drier than the Sahara, alcohol also makes your skin itchy. This is because scratching is your body’s way of trying to get you to scrape off the irritated layer of your skin for the fresher, healthier skin beneath.
No brainer tip: Scratching your skin off will hurt your spray tan.
3. Tan lasts a shorter amount of time
Your skin dries out, sheds faster, and then you feel itchy and you begin to scratch it off: it is not hard to imagine why alcohol in a spray tan solution can drastically reduce the life of your spray tan. What’s worse is that alcohol can drastically reduce the life of a future spray tan as well!
4. Causes a tan to fade blotchy
Because alcohol causes your skin to dry out faster, it will also make your tan fade unevenly. Oftentimes this takes the form of unsightly patches, blotches, or even thousands of spots. While this might be great if you are trying to fit in with a pack of cheetahs, it would look strange around the office.
5. Actually hurts your skin in the long run
Much in the same way that scary clowns damage childhoods, alcohol in a spray tan solution damages your skin forever. Once alcohol has ruined your skin like an untrained cat ruins couches, it continues to harm you by breaking down your skin’s natural barrier so that other substances can penetrate your skin more easily.
For more information, please check out the segment about the Acid Mantle from the Doctor Oz website: Click Here to read the article.
6. Can cause acne breakouts
Yes, many people with acne use acne treatments that have alcohol in them: but guess what? That’s actually making it harder for them to maintain a healthy regime. Alcohol dries out the skin, and thus prompts your body to actually produce more oils—thus actually increasing your acne breakouts in the long run! In addition, the drying out is irritating, itchy, and can damage your skin’s barrier system.
Why would a spray tan company use alcohol?
Alcohol allows DHA to set more easily into the skin, but at the cost of ruining your skin’s protective barrier—destroying your skin’s health.
Please check out the research article at the National Library of Medicine for more information: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21409958
