The skin is by far the body’s largest organ. Depending on your height and body mass, it covers an area of about 1.5 to 2 square meters and weighs between 3.5 and 10 kg – about 15 percent of your total body mass.
Think of it as a kind of intelligent armor. It helps you sense the world around you, protects your internal organs and defends you against pathogens. This would be reason enough to take good care of it, especially because premature aging of the skin can impair its ability to fulfill all these functions, leaving you at higher risk of infection. However, the latest research suggests that the consequences for skin health may go much deeper.
To understand why, we need to examine its structure. The skin is composed of three layers: the outer, waterproof epidermis that constantly regenerates; dermis below, packed with fibers of collagen and elastin; and the underlying subcutis, or hypodermis, made of fat and connective tissue and filled with cavities that help buffer the rest of the body against shock. Damage to these layers can trigger skin cells to pump out inflammatory proteins. In the short term, this results in more blood flowing to the area of injury, which can speed up healing. However, if high levels of inflammation are sustained over long periods of time, these chemicals can build up and, using a vast network of blood vessels in the dermis, spread to other organs and damage them.
Accelerated aging
Aging can accelerate this process. As we age, our skin loses collagen, water and fat – making it more fragile. Even worse, many skin cells enter a state called senescence, where they increase the production of inflammatory chemicals. This potentially toxic cocktail appears to amplify the risk of age-related conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and dementia. Although we do not yet have definitive proof of this hypothesis, various lines of evidence now support it. Animal experiments have shown, for example, that skin damage can trigger widespread inflammation. Researchers from the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands, meanwhile, found that whether a person’s face looked older or younger than their actual age was associated with their overall risk of developing cataracts, osteoporosis, hearing loss and chronic obstructive lung disease. as their general cognitive functioning.
In the future, we may well have “senotherapeutic” drugs to either remove senescent cells, including those in the skin, or stop them from releasing inflammatory proteins. These are still under development, but progress is promising. In the meantime, there are a host of lifestyle changes that can help us all take care of this crucial and fascinating organ. Read on to find out more.
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