Liza Williams - Liverpool gyms should ditch sunbeds
VISITING a gym regularly is supposed to be a great way to improve your health, writes health reporter Liza Williams, right.
Half an hour on the cross trainer, a few kilometres on the treadmill and maybe a wind down in the steam room. But, if you then follow your fitness regime with five minutes on a sunbed, you could potentially give yourself skin cancer.
That trip to the gym suddenly sounds less beneficial.
So surely, if private gyms advertise themselves as a way to achieve peak physical condition, they should do what the North West Cancer Research Fund is asking and ditch the sunbeds. Levels of melanoma – the most serious form of skin cancer – have rocketed in Liverpool, and children as young as 12 are regularly using sunbeds. Gyms with the machines should face up to the fact they are part of the problem.
