What Causes Skin to Age (and Why You Need to Take Care of This)
[Our skin] acts as a channel of communication with the outside world; protects the body from water loss; uses specialized pigment cells, called melanocytes, to protect the body from ultraviolet radiation; participates in calcium homeostasis by contributing to the body’s supply of vitamin D.
Source
When we enter our 40s, changes in the skin can be much more noticeable than before. As you probably have noticed, fine lines start to sneak up, our skin can get a lot drier and it can also begin to appear to sag (mine has around the mouth area).
In fact, the skincare routine that you have been applying til now could not meed your needs today.
This is the time to start making simple changes to your skincare habits to prevent further fine lines and wrinkles as well as dry skin. It is also time to get rid of lines and winkles which are already showing on your skin.
Drinking plenty of water, eating foods that contain anti-aging properties, getting good sleep, managing stress, using natural and/or organic beauty products that work and protecting your skin from the sun (important!!) are sure ways to get a good start (more on this towards the end of the post).
I started using natural skincare products when I hit my menopause a few years ago. Up until then, I’d been using drugstore beauty products, the not-so-cheap skincare products but not too expensive either. I never really showed an interest in natural and organic products til I hit my menopause.
Basically, out of the blue, one day, I felt extremely attracted to herbs and natural ingredients for no apparent reason. The pull was so strong that I suddenly stopped using the brands I’d been using til then and in no time swapped to natural products from health stores.
I’ve been using natural products ever since. I’m in my 50s now and my skin looks incredibly healthy, luminous, vibrant, with a natural glow and ‘full of life’. I get comments about the look of my skin very often and I feel lucky that I found a way to treat it that feels incredibly fulfilling.
Young Skin vs Ageing Skin vs Mature Skin
Fashion magazines and society in general extol a youthful appearance which is not really a fair (or healthy) reflection on how skin ages over time. This is such a natural and beautiful process, it is embarrassing how our mature skin is treated all over the fashion industry. The general perception is that ‘aging is bad’, when, in fact, the older I get the happier I seem to be.
I’ve also noticed how older people seem a lot more relaxed and happier than the younger generation, who is generally a lot stressed out and usually unhappy with the way they look.
Magazines and other popular media don’t tend to embrace nature’s course but, instead, seem to fight it. This is NOT NATURAL. I don’t look like when I was 20 and neither would I want to. I was insecure and so was my appearance. I didn’t have the inner-solidity I feel I have today, which has to do with both aging (time) and living (experience).
There is no way I could have been so confident and wonderfully settled within myself in my 20s or 30s.
Ageing is part of life and it is BEAUTIFUL. I love the way my skin changes and shows an experienced Self. I love to see this in trees also, I look at the way their bark shows ‘fine lines and wrinkles’ which are akin to wisdom and age.
Having said that, it is important that I take care of my skin in a way that MAKES SENSE to me. I hydrate it, oil it, clean it, tone it, love it and nurture it as best I can. In my 20s and 30s I would also take care of my skin but I did it so I looked good for others. It was all about my APPEARANCE to others and so I didn’t really do it for me, for my own sense of inner love and fulfilment.
I didn’t know this at the time, I was too busy living in my head trying to please a world that didn’t seem to please me back. A lot has rained since then and now I experience life the other way around: I’m not in my head anymore but in my heart. I please myself in an unselfish way and the world seems to have responded back in exactly the same way. I can truly say I’m experiencing a miracle!
My young skin turned into a mature skin the same way my young soul turned into a mature soul.
The Effects of Skin Aging
Nowadays I’m happy for my skin to age ‘gracefully’, as they say.
Our skin is indeed such a complex organ. It is composed of different cell types and structures (see my post on the skin here). Just a quick recap on that post – the skin has 3 layers we need to take care of:
- Epidermis (outer layer of the skin)
- Dermis (the layer below the epidermis)
- Hypodermis (subcutaneous tissue)
Just a quick not here to say that the last tissue (hypodermis) supports our connective tissue framework (more on that below).
What Happens When We Get Older?
When we get older our skin starts to change as well (I don’t know about you but I’ve put a few pounds around my waste and other parts of my body which I don’t seem to be able to shed off that easily. I’m happy with my appearance but I do see how after my menopause my body has changed very rapidly and considerably).
Our skin, over time, becomes thinner as well as more fragile and drier. It can sag and bruise easier than before. We get fine lines especially around the mouth and eyes as well as the appearance of wrinkles.
Here’s a breakdown of what happens so it’s easier for you to see this at a glance:
- Your skin becomes drier
- Your skin becomes thinner
- Your skin becomes more fragile
- Your skin looses smoothness
- Your skin looses tightness
- Your skin bruises more easily
- Your skin becomes looser
- Appearance of fine lines
- Appearance of wrinkles
- Loss of cartilage
- Your skin starts to droop
Now, I take care of all of the above with a natural lifestyle and natural skincare (which I make myself, and I also use plenty of wonderful carrier and essential oils).
Yes, taking care of your mature skin is important if you want to support its process and hydrate it accordingly. I treat my natural skin with nature and that’s how I like it.
Mature skin has a thinner epidermis. In fact, the biochemistry of our skin changes over time and the enzymes that were in charge of repairing our skin stop doing the job like they were doing it before. The skin starts to see results from this over time.
Here’s what happens in a nutshell:
- Repair of the dermis is altered
- Loss of connective tissue
- Skin loses ability to regenerate
- Dermal thickness starts to disappear
I hope this is not too boring because I’m going to get a little more technical below.
Just bear with me, I’ll try to make it as easy as possible – the idea is that you understand why your skin ages which will make it easier to then also understand why you need to take care of it.
Skin Connective Tissue and How it Changes
The dermis (skin layer below epidermis which supplies nutrients to it) is mostly composed of fibroblasts, which are the cells responsible for generating connective tissue as well as allowing the skin to recover from injury.
These fibroblasts, in fact, secrete collagen and elastin which SUPPORT and GIVE elasticity to our skin. (just so you can get an idea; the dermis is the HARD connective tissue that is used to make leather).
Being an ELASTIC tissue with bounce (grab your cheek and pull to see what I mean), the skin needs a strong framework. This framework is called ‘connective tissue’. All connective tissue is composed of structural proteins (collagen and elastin), specialised proteins (fibrillin, fibronectin, laminin) and proteoglycans (formed of glycosaminoglycans – GAGs, also known as ‘hyaluronic acid’, which I’m sure you’ve heard of by now).
Anyway, the above compounds are responsible for making our skin looking young so I think it is important that you understand the function of collagen, elastin and hyaluronic acid in terms of how they are in charge of giving our skin strength, elasticity and bounce.
About Collagen (You’ll Constantly Hear About Collagen When it Comes to Anti-Ageing Skincare!)
Let’s do this using bulleted points because it ends up being a lot easier to understand in my opinion.
- Collagen is the most abundant protein found in us, human beings
- Collagen is responsible for giving support as well as strength to our skin
- Collagen is the main component of our dermis (which sits right below our epidermis, the most outer layer of the skin)
- Over time proteins degenerate (get worse) which result in the well known signs of aging
So, easy to see we need to take care of this protein – collagen – as it happens to be the most abundant protein of our skin’s connective tissue.
The loss of the precious protein collagen is what causes the typical characteristic of what looks like skin that is aging. I’m not going to go into what happens to collagen but let’s just say that 70% of the dry skin mass is composed of collagen so we need to be aware of how important this protein is for the youthful and healthy look of our skin!
As we age:
- We produce less collagen which in turn affects the loss of bounce on our skin
- The loss of this collagen is the cause of wrinkles
That’s all you need to know.
About Elastin (Yes, to do with Skin Elasticity)
Elastin is the responsible for the elastic tissues to be able to stretch although it also takes an important part in the health of our cells.
When these fibres change over time it is believed that they could be the cause of photo aged skin.
What you need to take into account here is that over time, as the skin gets older, we lose skin elasticity.
The result? Sagging skin.
Hyaluronic Acid (Responsible for Our Soft and Hydrated Skin)
Hyaluronic acid has become quite the talk in the skincare world in recent years. And well deservidely, this acid together with collage and elastin is responsible for giving the skin the look it has: soft, supple, hydrated… You get it.
It is now a well known fact that hyaluronic acid can bind water up to 1,000 times its volume. This means our skin will have a plump look because of it.
Photoaged skin shows less amounts of this important acid. In young skin this acid can be found around the edges of elastin and collagen fibers (basically where these fibres meet). This important acid will give your skin a youthful look.
Free Radicals, Oxidative Stress & Antioxidants
Just bear with me, not long with the ‘theory’ part of how our skin ages.
Have you heard of ‘free radicals’? I bet you have. For those who haven’t or are not sure about this, let’s say free radicals is the same as saying: oxidation.
Oxidation is what happens when an element is in contact with oxygen (with the air). You’ve seen metal rust because of this (it oxidises). Well, something similar happens to our skin over time because of being in touch with the oxygen in the air.
The appearance of free radicals, then, are a key factor when it comes to our skin aging over time.
I’m not going to technically explain the entire process here but if you’re interested just watch the video below, it explains oxidative stress really well!
Ok, so if you watched the video you hopefully understood about free radicals and the problem with oxidative stress (I personally love the video. Do give it a chance if you’ve got the time).
When unbalanced cells steal electrons from the ‘good’ cells, they set off a chain reaction causing a lot of damage (the new cells turn into unbalanced cells because they are missing an electron so they continue stealing from the balanced cells – a little like the way vampires work).
When a lot of free radicals are formed and/or there are no available electrons to be ‘stolen’ then we have what is known as ‘oxidative stress’.
The role of antioxidants here is to neutralise these free radicals and hence stop the chain reaction.
Just for my own pleasure, I’m going to explain in the simplest way possible below:
Oxygen, pollution, etc turn good molecules (balanced) into free radicals (unbalanced). Free radicals then attack in order to steal what they’ve missing: an electron. They’re looking into balancing themselves again, like they were before oxygen, pollution, etc ‘converted’ them. What happens? When they steal the electron from a balanced molecule they turn it into a free radical (unbalanced – can you see the chain reaction?). This causes damage to the cell resulting in disease and inflammation.
Antioxidants neutralise the free radicals and turns them stable again.
As time goes by and we age, we need these antioxidants.
Intrinsic & Extrinsic Aging
Ooh, big words!
It’s easy to understand their meaning in terms of skin and aging once you get to know what they’re referring to exactly (intrinsic > inside // extrinsic > outside).
So, what’s intrinsic and extrinsic ‘aging’?
Intrinsic aging (‘inside’) is physiological aging:
- Genetics (hereditary influence)
Extrinsic aging (‘outside’) is subject to your particular lifestyle:
- Sun’s rays (ultraviolet radiation)
- Smoking
- Drinking alcohol
- Lacking nutrients that are good for your skin (a poor diet)
- Poor sleep
Out of the two, extrinsic aging is the one that can cause the most damage. In fact, probably up to 80-90% of your aging process is due to extrinsic aging (your lifestyle).
The normal cellular oxidative metabolism can generate different by-products responsible for molecular damage, thus contributing to skin aging (intrinsic aging). However, it has been reported that up to 80–90% of skin aging is due to environmental and xenobiotic agents (extrinsic aging)
Source
The good news about this is that you can change bad (or excessive) habits. Each reader will have to be accountable for how they manage their life. I’ve had my share amount of alcohol in my lifetime and have smoked tobacco in the past for many years. My skin looks amazing, and I’m grateful for this, but I must say I’m very lucky (and I do take good care of it nowadays).
I’ve also had a poor diet in the past (I’ve got a lot better now but, believe me, there’s still a lot of room for improvement here). Having lived in the UK for almost 30 years I didn’t have to worry about the sun that much. Now I’m in Tenerife (Canary Islands) where the sun is strong and also I live in a hot-all-year-round area so I need to watch this extrinsic aging factor as much as I possibly can.
Other Causes
Your skin is a self-renewal tissue but your cells stop replicating once the telomeres (the end of chromosomes) are short and so they reach the end of the telomere length.
As cells divide, the telomeres get shorter. At some point the telomere just becomes too short although we don’t really know if this is a sign of aging or if short telomeres have something to do with aging (contributing to causing age if you see what I mean).
Either way, over time cells stop being able to reproduce.
And, Now, The MAIN Cause of Aging!
We’re almost there. But it is important for you to understand that sun exposure is believed to be the main cause of your skin aging. This is called photoaging.
Yes, the one thing that gives you life also causes damage to your skin quite badly.
As I mentioned before, while living in the UK I was somehow ‘safe’ from the sun (the sun is not strong there and I was usually away indoors, anyway). But now, it is a totally different story.
Being in La Finca means I’m exposed to really strong sun on a daily basis (also here my lifestyle is outdoors 90% of the time, if not more). I need to make skincare that is suitable for where I live now. I know making your own skincare might not be an option for you but, believe me, there’s really good natural and organic skincare you can use to avoid the damage of photoaging.
Let’s Recap!
That was a lot of info so I think the best thing to do now is recap at we’ve covered above – I don’t want you to read this like a text book and go away empty handed. At least the key takeaways should be:
What happens to our skin:
- As we get older our skin starts to change (more fragile, drier, can sag, bruises easier, we get fine lines and wrinkles, etc)
- We also get loss of connective tissue, our epidermis gets thinner, skin loses ability to regenerate
- We produce less collagen (responsible for giving support as well as strength to our skin) which also deteriorates and is the cause of wrinkles
- Elastin fibres change over time and we lose elasticity of our skin resulting in sagging skin
- We have less hyaluronic acid which makes the skin look hydrated, supple and soft
What happens because of our time and lifestyle:
- The oxygen in the air as well as pollution causes free radicals on our skin which are responsible for the oxidative stress, a factor when it comes to our skin aging over time
- Then there’s extrinsic aging (lifestyle), our exposure to the elements (see below the last bulleted point) and diet
- Finally, we have the biggest cause of our skin to age: photoaging (sun exposure)
Get a Good Start: How to Prevent Aging of the Skin
If you’ve read all of the above you have now a pretty good idea on what causes your skin to age.
Below I’ve added what you need to take into account if you want to prevent aging of your skin.
1. Avoid the Sun (Photoaging)
Obviously we all need a bit of sun and although I’m not sure about the exact ‘minutes’ per day and/or strength of sun you should be avoiding.
Sun is stronger in some places than others so let’s just say you need to avoid your skin being overexposed to it and wear protection as and when it makes sense to do so.
2. Lifestyle (Not as Hard as You Think)
So I stopped smoking, I stopped drinking alcohol, I also stopped eating certain meats and now I also grow my own fruit and veg. I go to sleep before 12 every day and wake up very early. My lifestyle is quite healthy but, as I mentioned before, there’s always room for improvement.
Here are the things I suggest you do to avoid dermal aging:
- Don’t smoke
- Don’t drink alcohol or drink in moderation
- Avoid polluted areas
- Make sure to get enough sleep
- Eat well (a healthy, balanced diet – consult a nutritionist)
Although I do have to be careful in terms of sun overexposure, I’m living in an area that’s perfect for all the above mentioned bulleted points (area is clean, no neighbours, great for growing my own food, I get plenty of rest, I get plenty of exercise and I’m in constant contact with nature). Mine is quite a healthy lifestyle and add to this the fact that I make my own cosmetics… Yep, I can’t complain!
Which takes me to the next prevention strategy.
3. Use Natural and/or Organic AntiAging Skincare
The skincare I make might be a little complicated for some in terms of the formulas I use but I do think it is important in general to dab into the world of DIY natural skincare and at least get to know how ingredients work and what do they do.
You might be someone who enjoys buying expensive antiaging skincare (and good for you if this is your choice, I’m not against it) but sometimes this is not really needed in my personal opinion.
With the right information at hand you can easily understand why your skin ages and which antiaging skincare products and ingredients could work for you.
Many times people buy antiaging skincare that’s expensive and ‘complicated’ to understand (I’m talking about formulas with endless list of unknown ingredients) when, in fact, this might not be necessary at all.
If you learn just the basics you can make informed decisions in no time. You might end up applying an oil that works wonders on your face, or a hydrosol (a floral water) that your skin totally loves, or a simple but effective moisturiser that not only is inexpensive but it makes your skin glow because of particular ingredients it has.
My point is simple: know your skin and treat it well. I’m all about hydrating, moisturising, massaging, pampering and loving. Antiaging doesn’t have to mean ‘aging is bad’. It can also mean not letting your skin age on its own, without the love and care you should give to it.
Be ‘there’, with your skin, every step of the way, and enjoy the aging process as naturally as you possibly can.
Get Started From Today
Has this post helped? Is there anything you could change from today in order to help your skin age better?
You don’t have to make big changes you know? Just a small change here and there will probably make a huge impact over time.
I didn’t switch to natural til my late forties. I stopped drinking and smoking also in my fourties and I very recently moved to the Canary Islands to lead a healthy lifestyle.
I started making my own cosmetics a couple of years ago and I continuously learn about healthier choices and how to maintain my skin in the best condition possible. I can see my skin looking good and with the good quality ingredients I use it’ll probably stay looking good for a long, long time!
So, use this website as your one-stop-shop for all antiaging info, guides, products and care – learn to treat your skin the way it deserves: naturally and with plenty of love. That’s all it needs!
Keywords: what causes wrinkles and sagging skin, characteristics of aging skin, aging skin problems, normal skin changes with aging
Support
About Proteoglycans
What Causes Skin to Age
The Role of Telomeres in the Ageing of Human Skin
Skin Photoaging and the Role of Antioxidants in Its Prevention
