Tanners can take comfort in the fact the body is silently working beneath the skin to prevent cancer even if nothing is visible
Many pale-skinned Britons suffer the annual indignity of spending the first few days of a sunshine break with stubbornly pasty limbs.
Now scientists have discovered why people do not tan immediately, even after a day of sunbathing at the beach.
The delayed tanning phenomenon occurs because the body prioritises repairing the DNA damage done to the skin by radiation.
Only after the cells have repaired the genetic information sufficiently do they begin to increase melanin which darkens the skin, generating a physical protection to help withstand the next bout of Sun damage.