Did you know that your skin is your largest organ? It protects our insides from the outside. It needs our support to do its job well.
We are going to start a deep dive series into nourishing your skin as a critical component of anti-aging and age-proofing. But, we can’t start to build our understanding without making sure we are all on the same page. So let’s go…
Back to Basics
Our skin is made up of three layers:
- The epidermis
- The dermis
- The hypodermis
The epidermis is the top layer of skin that is responsible for holding moisture in. It is the first protection barrier of your skin. It’s the layer that peels when you have a sunburn or that sloughs off if you have dry skin. This layer has melanocytes, which produce melanin, which produce pigmentation, which determines skin color. Freckles and suntans occurs in the epidermis layer.
The dermis is the second and thickest layer of your skin. It contains oil glands, hair follicles, nerve endings, and blood vessels. It also provides the structure or scaffolding for your skin. It is primarily made of up of collagen which is responsible for the flexibility and strength of your skin.
The hypodermis is the deepest fat layer that insulates us and protects and cushions our internal bits.
Why does it matter?
Different issues are caused and solved in different layers of the skin. For instance, wrinkles are most evident in the epidermis or epidermal layer. If you treat this layer, you can start to visibly impact the look of wrinkles. However, as we grow wiser, we lose volume in both our hypodermis and dermis layers. The scaffolding structure of our skin starts to weaken and breakdown. So the longer term solution to wrinkle prevention is to treat the visible (epidermis) while supporting the structure (dermis and hypodermis).
Basically, to reverse (or stall) the signs of aging, you need to target the right layer in the right way.
The good news is that skin, though our largest organ, is also our most accessible organ and therefore an easy one to positively impact. We feed it internally through what we eat and drink, but we can also nourish it topically with what we put on it. Understanding and remembering these three simple layers is critical knowledge to have as you start the journey to age-proof your skin.
Next week, as we start to dive into different nutrients and treatments, we’ll keep coming back to this foundational information.
