How to Treat Wrinkles
History tells us that medieval European women drank large potions of poisonous arsenic and even covered their faces in bat’s blood in an effort to preserve their unwrinkled image. There is evidence that Roman women used warm male urine in an attempt to exfoliate their skin, but now, commercialism has jumped on the ‘wrinkle’ bandwagon and turned the ever declining dermis into an industry now estimated to be worth in the region of $160 billion a year. To put it another way, sensible Americans, those people that gave us Kellogg’s cornflakes, Gillette razor blades and even put a man on the moon now spend more on getting rid of wrinkles than they do on educating their children. You see, it is all a matter of perspective. Just try relating that fact to the old grey Kenyan lady shuffling along the red murram track with her two young grandchildren on their way to school.
So, what are wrinkles, how do we get them and why do we hate them so. To understand wrinkles, we have to understand skin. Everybody’s skin is made up of three layers: the outer protective epidermis, the inner dermis, and another deeper part, (which is not technically part of the skin) called the subcutaneous layer. When we are young, the differing layers work as one unit to allow the skin to stretch and remain supple by retaining moisture. The inner dermis at that stage has an elastic quality because of collagen building blocks and lots of fibres called elastin. These proteins interact to keep the skin looking and feeling young. However, over time, the outer layer gets bombarded with ultra-violet light, attacked by chemicals and the inner layer gets saturated with poisons from cigarette smoke and the ravages of time and the collagen building blocks begin to disappear.
To put it another way, let us imagine two houses in a village in Leitrim. One has recently been built and has become the nest of a fledgling family, continually painting the walls, dusting the cupboards, and washing the floors. The other is the residence of an older gentleman in the sunset years of life, satisfied with passing away his latter years with the odd trip to Mc Govern’s local pub. The first house is like new skin, the proud housewife never allows toxins to settle too long in case they harm her children, the proud father paints walls and hangs wallpaper to make their nest as habitable as possible. Both, pander to traditions as old as time immortal.
In the second house, the old man will keep up appearances by painting the outside walls, if the ‘yanks are coming home’. This is akin, to the aging lady who wants to look her best for her daughter’s wedding. This is because both events evoke emotions that make us remember how things used to be. The mother remembers herself on her wedding day and how times have changed her, the old man remembers how the house looked before Michael left and went to America. Both parties have feelings of guilt, of allowing neglect to take the place of repair. Maybe, it was for financial reasons or possibly, it was just that Old Man time just happened to creep unpon them unnoticed. To understand the mechanism of how skin ages and ultimately wrinkles; we can take the analogy of the old man’s house a little further. The whitewash lime paint that the old man goes out and buys and eventually gets somebody to put on the outside walls to give an ‘impression of repair to the yanks’ is like the putting cream on the epidermis. Of course, it will protect the house against the sweeping rains coming in from the Leitrim braes,nike air max 90, but eventually it will just dissolve and be washed away.
The old man knows, if the long lost brother who went to America wanted to return home to the house of his youth, he would have to put in new windows, plaster the inner walls, possibly even replace the roof and the ceiling joices in order to make the place habitable again. By analogy, the wooden timber supporting structure that holds up the roof and forms the windows is akin to the basic building blocks of a protein called collagen, which is present in our dermis. The plaster on the inner walls of the house, that wraps around the window ledges and hides the ceiling spars is akin to another flexible protein called elastin. However, despite this analogy, there is one big difference between the house and our body…our skin has its own built-in repair system. This means if we fall, little repair cells called fibroblasts, come like fleets of handymen from the local village to immediately repair the problem. What happens, is that over a period, the repair cells become less, the timber is not repaired, the plaster begins to fall off, and dreaded wrinkles appear.
What are the main causes of wrinkles?
Most wrinkles are associated with reduction in the amount of collagen and elastin in aging skin. This process, like the decaying house in Leitrim is considered to be a natural process. Frequent exposure to the elements, especially sunshine results in premature skin wrinkling and increased pigmentation (liver spots). Unfortunately, the type of ultraviolet light in sunshine also increases the likelihood of skin cancer. Frequent exposure to cigarette smoke delays the repair mechanism of skin and is one the main environmental factors that increase premature wrinkling of the skin. We can do little to decrease the rate of skin aging, but it is within our power to stay out of the more powerful suns rays and of course to STOP SMOKING.