Another birthday
There are two main ways to measure a person's age. The first is a standard method known as chronological age, which is tracked by the rotation of the sun. But you also have biological age, which is the rate at which you age physically—the maturation of your organs and cells. This can vary greatly from person to person and even within the same organism.
It's well known that as we age, our chronological age eventually adjusts to our appearance: skin becomes thinner, less even, and less elastic as the cells responsible for producing pigment and collagen die or "age." "- that is, they stop renewing and exist in a kind of dormant state.
But the real damage is to the environment. Although ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation can damage our DNA, causing sunburn, mutations, and skin cancer, 95% of the total ultraviolet radiation reaching the Earth's surface is ultraviolet A (UVA). This part of the sun's rays has a long wavelength, which allows it to penetrate deep into the dermis, where it breaks down collagen and stimulates its cells to produce melanin.
At the microscopic level, photogenic (sun-aged) skin is thicker and has a network of deformed elastin and collagen fibers. At the visible level, it is often unevenly pigmented and more wrinkled. That's right, you either don't tan (type one is called Fitzpatrick) or you have very dark skin (type six) that accurately describes the "never tan" scale. Even highly pigmented skin can burn and become photosensitized, although it takes longer for wrinkles to appear.
In fact, internal factors are thought to account for the smallest part of the classic "aged" appearance, with UV rays causing more than 80% of visible skin changes. If you have spent your whole life in a room with a screen, you will not notice serious changes in this organ until the age of 80.
However, it should be noted that along with these effects, chemical changes also occur in the skin. And this can greatly affect our overall health.
chemical cocktail
In 2000, at the beginning of the new century, a radical new concept appeared. A group of scientists from the University of Bologna (Italy) offered a new view of aging by observing how most organisms react to stress.
In a young healthy person, the immune system is normally used to maintain order - to repair damage and prevent infection. But as we age or our health deteriorates, these inflammatory responses can reach a critical point—when they become overused, they release a cascade of powerful chemicals that travel throughout the body, destroying and crippling healthy cells. Our DNA. Enter "inflammation," the simmering background of inflammation that accompanies the aging process.
This is where the skin comes in. Recent studies show that wrinkled, diseased, or damaged skin becomes part of this inflammatory system, releasing a chemical cocktail that causes more damage and inflammation. "Chronologically aging skin shows higher expression levels of a number of inflammatory cytokines and chemokines," says Mao-Kiang Mang, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco.
Locally, these chemicals break down collagen and elastin, causing the skin to thin, wrinkle, and lose elasticity," explains Tuba Musarrat Ansari, a doctoral student at Jiichi Medical University in Japan. "They [also] disrupt the skin barrier, increase water loss and increase sensitivity to stress," she says. The feedback loop is reinforced by aging skin cells due to natural aging or UV damage, which release their own inflammatory chemicals.
But this is only the beginning. The skin, the largest organ of the body, can have serious consequences. Chemicals released from diseased and dysfunctional skin soon enter the bloodstream where they wash away and damage other tissues. As a result of systemic inflammation, chemicals from the skin can reach and damage seemingly unrelated organs, including the heart and brain.