【Creative Cultivation Program】Why does the skin age?

How many people dream of having the skin that was as smooth as a baby's when they were children? How many people feel particularly lost when their skin gradually becomes wrinkled, rough, and dark yellow, and want to get back the feeling of their childhood? Today, let's give you a scientific explanation of how our skin changes from being as smooth as a baby's when we were children to becoming dry, yellow, and wrinkled when we grow up.

First of all, we say that children's skin is very tender, and we need to know why it is tender. There are several characteristics: First, the child's stratum corneum is relatively thin. The stratum corneum is the top layer of our skin. Let's review the basic structure of the skin. The skin is divided into three layers, namely the epidermis, dermis and subcutaneous tissue. And where is our stratum corneum? It is the outermost layer at the top of the epidermis that directly contacts the external environment. The city wall is here. Children's stratum corneum is relatively thin, generally thinner than our adults. The stratum corneum of adults is more than 5 to 6 layers. So if you look closely at the child's skin, sometimes you can see the capillaries underneath, right? This is because its stratum corneum is very thin. Then a very thin stratum corneum is conducive to the color inside to reflect. Why do children's faces often look red? In fact, it is because the color of the blood vessels inside can be shown.

The second major characteristic of children's skin is that the water content of the cells in its epidermis is relatively high. How high is the water content? For some children, especially infants, the water content of their epidermal cells can reach 60% or even close to 70%, so they have a soft and tender feeling. If you pinch them, water will come out because the water content is too high.

There is a third characteristic, children's skin is very tight. It is not particularly elastic when you pinch it. Why? In our dermis, there are a lot of fibers in our dermis to maintain the structure of our skin, including elastic fibers, collagen fibers, and reticular fibers. Some of these fibers are horizontal, some are vertical, and some are diagonal, pulling our entire skin tightly together. The fibers of children's skin are very tight, so these characteristics make our children's skin look particularly smooth, translucent, tender, and full of water, and also very tight. As we grow up, we will find that our skin gradually undergoes some changes. How does this happen? Let me ask you a question first, at what age does our skin begin to age? In fact, aging is a big topic. From a purely medical point of view, our skin should begin to age in the medical sense between the ages of 20 and 25. The first thing to see is our eyes. Under the slit lamp, our lens becomes cloudy, which is a manifestation of aging. The skin actually ages not much later than the eyes. Many women who are more careful will find that after the age of 25, very fine wrinkles begin to appear at the corners of the eyes and mouth. What is the reason? This phenomenon mainly occurs in our epidermis, which is a manifestation of the decrease in the water content of epidermal cells. So from around the age of 25, our skin begins to gradually age. To sum it up in four popular sentences: the skin becomes dry, the tendons become loose, the dermis becomes empty, and sugar and protein are noisy. What exactly is the aging of the skin? Let's analyze it one by one.

The first is that the skin becomes dry: the so-called skin is our skin, and the skin is the first to be easily observed. Drying means that the water content of the cells in our epidermis begins to decrease. Why does it decrease? Because with the metabolism of our cells, the activity of the cells begins to decrease. One of the important manifestations is that the activity of the coenzyme in the cells begins to decrease and the content begins to decrease. What is the equivalent of coenzyme? Coenzyme is equivalent to the chef in the cell. If this chef does not work well, even if we eat a lot of food and there is a lot of glucose around the cells, it is useless if there is no lack of nutrition. A lot of nutrients are outside the cell. Without the chef in the cell to process it, it cannot use the surrounding glucose. Therefore, the activity of this coenzyme decreases with age, so we will add niacinamide to many skin care products. Niacinamide is the precursor of coenzyme I and coenzyme II, which is used to supplement coenzymes. So niacinamide has an anti-aging effect, and this is the principle.

The second one is called loosening of tendons. We just told you that there are elastic fibers, collagen fibers and reticular fibers in the dermis. These fibers pull our tissues together to make the skin tight. But as we age, especially if we often stay up late, the ligaments and these fibers gradually begin to loosen and lengthen. Some people ask why it is related to staying up late? Yes, it is very related. These fibers in our dermis are composed of collagen, and who produces collagen? Some people say: "I know, chewing pig's trotters", but it is not. The pig's trotters we chew are finally broken down into amino acids, absorbed into the body, and finally synthesized into collagen by fibroblasts in our skin. After that, type I collagen and type II collagen are mixed and become the components of our fibers. In other words, there is a worker in our dermis called fibroblasts, which keeps processing things to keep your fibers from becoming loose and elastic. But as we age, the activity of fibroblasts themselves decreases, and another feature is that if you stay up late, you will miss the most active period of fibroblasts. Around midnight, from 10:00 to 2:00 at night, fibroblasts are most active. But if you are the type who "doesn't sleep until the moon goes down", by the time you want to sleep, the fibroblasts are past their most active point, and they can't produce enough collagen fibers, which eventually leads to the body not being able to produce enough collagen, which will cause these fibers to grow longer and longer without repair, and as the fibers grow longer, the skin becomes looser and looser. What are the external manifestations? In addition to the delicate, dry wrinkles at the corners of the eyes and mouth, deeper wrinkles and sagging skin begin to appear.

The third point is that the dermis becomes empty. In addition to various fibers, the dermis also contains collagen, hyaluronic acid, which is what we call sodium hyaluronate, and some chondroitin sulfate, etc. They are very important fillers that make the skin elastic. These things are also produced by our fibroblasts. Just now, I said that "I don't sleep until the moon sleeps." As we age, the activity of fibroblasts decreases, and the production of collagen, sodium hyaluronate, chondroitin sulfate, etc. also decreases. With less fillers, the dermis becomes empty. This is the third point, which is that the dermis becomes empty.

There is also a fourth point: sugar and protein are in a mess. Sugar, some sugar substances, including our sodium hyaluronate, are also sugar, which is blingbling itself. Elastic proteins, such as collagen, are also blingbling and elastic. But if sugar and protein are mixed together, a glycoprotein reaction will occur, and sugar and protein will combine. The newly produced glycoprotein is dry, hard and yellow. The amount of glycoprotein in the skin of an 80-year-old is 5 times that of a 20-year-old, so the skin of older people looks dry, yellow and hard, which is a deeper manifestation of aging. Although aging occurs naturally, it can be appropriately alleviated through human intervention. For example, we can effectively avoid the mixing of sugar and protein, a pair of enemies, by using a combination of niacinamide and vitamin E.

So we have analyzed the aging process very clearly. In summary, the skin becomes dry, the tendons become loose, the dermis becomes empty, and sugar and protein are noisy. The solution is actually mentioned in the previous article: First, the skin becomes dry. Why does the skin become dry? Because the activity of skin cells decreases. In addition to normal hydration and moisturizing, we need to provide some substances like niacinamide to make our cells more active. Second, the loosening of tendons and the emptying of dermis are related to fibroblasts. Fibroblasts are very willful and have a unique personality. So we must first get a good beauty sleep - beauty sleep can really beautify. Second, provide more protein substances in our daily diet to help it work well; at the same time, we can also use some substances containing collagen or sodium hyaluronate to enhance the filler inside to increase the filler inside. Finally, for the glycoprotein reaction, you can use some skin care products containing niacinamide and vitamin E to reduce the two of them together. Do you remember the formula and specific treatment methods?