On the modern cosmetic market, you can easily find many products for a sunless tan. The very first product was self-tanning lotion that was created in 1960. Since then, the varieties of self tanners have increased greatly. On the modern market, you can find lotions, but also, sunless tanning sprays, bronzers, tanning accelerators, and tanning pills.

The most popular products today are tanning sprays and lotions. A large number of cosmetic companies offer their own lines of tanning sprays and lotions. In most cases, such lotions contain a special tanning agent like dihydroxyacetone that has the abbreviation, DHA. Dihydroxyacetone, DHA, is a substance made of sugar cane that interacts with the upper layer of your skin to change its color. But, as long as the most upper layer of skin cells are dead, the sunless tan lasts only four to five days because as the dead skin cells peel off, the color fades.

And, to apply these sunless tanning lotions, you will need to follow strict rules; otherwise, the results will not look as expected. You need to keep higher levels of your skin moisturizer because areas of dry skin become darker and the effects will last for a shorter period of time in these areas. You should also keep in mind that most of the presently available sun tanning lotions and sprays work pretty quickly, so you need to be fast. It is better to have someone helping you to apply tanning lotion. Of course, you could always go to a beauty salon where the entire process is performed by a specialist. Some beauty salons have automatic tanning machines that use many different tanning sprays.

Bronzers are just a kind of cosmetic because they cover your skin with a dark layer of color. This means that a bronzer will give you the fastest results. But, as long as bronzers are cosmetic products they will wash off away in the bath or shower.

Another product for self-tanning is tanning pills. The sunless tanning pills varieties are pretty impressive, but most tanning pills are not approved by health organizations for the most part. And the mechanism of sunless tanning pills has nothing to do with tanning because they don't change the level of melanin in your skin. With all of the tanning pills varieties the two most common types of these tanning products: tanning pills that contain caretenoid pigments and tanning pills that contain tyrosine. Tanning pills varieties based on careteniods are more numerous than pills varieties that contain tyrosine.

But, the problem with sunless tanning pills is that the pigment not only colors the skin, but the internal organs also get colored with the pigment. That can be dangerous for your health because these tanning pills have different side effects. Caretenoid sunless tanning pills don't affect the natural process melanogenesis, they only add new color. But as long as in some portions of you body, like your palms, a special layer of fat is present for protection, a pretty strange orange color will happen. The orange color on the palms can stay for many months. Nobody wants this to happen.