Why Does Human Skin Age?
When it comes to skincare, it is important to understand why our skin ages in the first place because, only when we know the root cause of skin aging, we can choose effective skincare products!
1 Why do people age?
This question takes me back to the old days of studying aging and longevity.Although until today, we still can’t completely solve the ancient human problem of aging and longevity.But at least for now, we have a general understanding of aging.
Current perceptions of aging have become very refined, such as the following graphic from a classic review article by an aging superstar.The points summarized in it can be described as a collection of introductions to the current field of research on aging, and even after several years have passed, our research on aging still hasn’t broken out of these broad frameworks.
Despite the complexity of the diagram, however, it is relatively well categorized when it comes specifically to certain organs and tissue structures.In the case of skin aging, for example, the underlying causes of skin aging can be summarized in two major parts:
- Damage from multiple blows leading to aging
- Inadequate repair capacity and stem cell exhaustion
2 Damage from multiple blows leads to aging
From the time life appears on earth, we are inevitably hit by internal and external problems.Outside, we are affected by a variety of factors in the environment, such as ultraviolet radiation will allow DNA damage, which is a common factor in skin aging, in the place of strong ultraviolet rays, a lot of people’s skin cells are genetically damaged, if the damage is difficult to repair and did not enter the apoptotic pathway, then the cells will be triggered to enter the aging.In addition to this, temperature and humidity changes are also a strong stimulus, as exposed skin, naturally and inevitably have to deal with the effects of temperature and humidity, these stimuli for a long time to act on the skin, is also a factor in skin aging.
Of course, the internal causes are no less important, typically oxidative stress.Cellular metabolism generates high-energy oxygen free radicals, and these high-energy oxygen free radicals will keep crashing inside the cell, causing DNA damage, protein denaturation, and many other things. Even though there are ways to counteract this in the body, such as the typical superoxide dismutase enzyme, a long term hit will still trigger a series of hidden problems that will continue to build up until the cell irreversibly senesces.
3 Inadequate repair capacity and stem cell exhaustion
In fact, the body is not powerless to damage, in fact, we have the corresponding repair mechanism to deal with cellular damage, for example, the typical is the DNA repair mechanism, the gene synthesizes the corresponding repair enzyme and then carry out various forms of DNA repair, which has already won two Nobel Prizes for the important results.
In addition to this, when the cell cannot be repaired, then it enters the apoptotic phase, where the whole cell is degraded and swallowed up, and then another important type of cell, the stem cell, differentiates and thus compensates for the apoptotic cell.In fact this process occurs throughout almost the entire life cycle, which is why we can maintain a certain body structure for quite some time.However, this system is not limitless, and in fact, as we age, the overall repair capacity of the organism becomes progressively more difficult to cope with our cellular damage, and even more problematic, the stem cells in the organism are not in unlimited supply, and are in a state of senescence and exhaustion as age advances, and as a result, repair and replenishment are not able to make up for the damage, and so cellular senescence develops, and certainlyaging of the skin.
4 How to deal with aging skin?
Although overall individual aging is still an irreversible process today, and although there is a great deal of research focusing on this and a number of meaningful molecules and mechanisms have been discovered, yet with current technology we are still unable to completely curb individual aging.
However, this does not prevent us from utilizing the means available to us to achieve a certain degree of slowing down the aging process, especially in the field of skin.Typical is a variety of anti-aging products, they often contain some of the current science has revealed the anti-aging ingredients, such as amino acids, coenzymes, nucleic acids, minerals, antioxidants and hyaluronic acid and other anti-aging active ingredients of.These ingredients are both cellular nutrients, such as amino acids, which can be used directly as nutrition for skin cells, and antioxidants, which mainly respond to the oxidative damage to cells caused by peroxides, and are used to make up for the lack of antioxidant capacity in the cellular aging process.Hyaluronic acid, on the other hand, is a familiar skin-protecting ingredient used for the restoration of the skin’s physiological functions.These ingredients can slow down cellular aging to some extent by helping to remove oxidative damage, replenish cellular components, etc., and have also been shown to do so in studies.
Of course, anti-aging is not the same as a complete solution to the problem of skin aging.If you really want to solve the skin aging problem from the root, I personally tend to stem cell level for a full range of treatments, after all, for aging skin, repair and patch can only be a certain degree of slowing down the aging, but can not eradicate the problem, and the recovery of the stem cells is the best strategy, therefore, early on there will be from embryos to obtain the stem cell nutrients and then injected into the skin to provide nutrients for the stem cell andactivate the stem cells.A number of research organizations are already trying to conduct stem cell therapy to directly address the root cause of the problem, but it is still far from being applied.