Anti-aging, what are we fighting against?

Faced with the dazzling array of anti-aging skin care products on the market, skin care experts can't help but ask soul-searching questions: What exactly is anti-aging fighting against? Why does the skin age? In fact, different people have different understandings of anti-aging. Let's talk about it below.

01 What is anti-aging fighting against?

What is anti-aging fighting against? Different people have different understandings. For researchers, at least so far, anti-aging is more about fighting against the inevitable damage that occurs over time. For example, the two versions of the aging Hallmark reflect the complexity of aging that scientists feel [1,2].

From 2013 to 2023, scientists' understanding of aging has deepened, and they found that aging involves a series of influences such as genomic instability, telomere shortening, mitochondrial disorders, etc. Therefore, anti-aging is to fight against these more than a dozen factors.

However, for the public, it is quite different, especially in the practical application level. People's view on anti-aging is more about resisting the external manifestations of aging, and the typical example is skin care. The face is the part that is most likely to show aging, because the facial skin itself is our most superficial structure, and compared with other body tissues, it is more susceptible to external factors. Whether it is wind, sun, contact, or cleaning, the exposed facial skin is the first to bear the brunt. Add to that the objective aging factors inside the body, and the face becomes the first stop for our aging.

Because of this, people's intuitive understanding of anti-aging is: skin anti-aging. The most intuitive manifestation of skin aging is the appearance of wrinkles, sagging, spots, etc. The direct cause behind these factors is the lack of skin support systems such as collagen, and the damage of the skin barrier caused by external stimuli. Therefore, we can see that a large number of anti-aging ingredients are aimed at this type of problem.

02 Causes of facial aging – loss of collagen, etc.

The loss of facial support components is the most obvious cause of aging, and supplementing such components is the most direct way. The main facial support is collagen, so supplementing collagen has become the mainstream, and the methods are also diverse. There are direct supplements of collagen, such as adding collagen to skin care products, or injecting collagen fillers. This effect is naturally immediate and can quickly make the skin plump; there are also indirect supplement strategies to revitalize collagen. Peptides such as palmitoyl tripeptide can guide the newly synthesized protein to transfer to the skin, which has the effect of filling the skin; there is also the famous bosera, which can promote the synthesis of collagen, improve the adhesion between the dermis and the epidermis, thereby making the skin tighter, and thus improving wrinkles.

03 Causes of facial aging——metabolic damage

Skin cells themselves will naturally suffer from various metabolic damages in normal metabolism, the most typical of which is oxidative damage, which is caused by oxygen free radicals naturally produced by mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation and other processes. Although the body also has some repair measures, they are far from enough, resulting in damage to DNA, proteins and even organelles. It has become a common idea to supplement the corresponding ingredients from exogenous sources to deal with it. Therefore, antioxidant ingredients have always been one of the important members in the field of skin care, and the most classic one is the well-known SOD, which is superoxide dismutase. The same is true for other star ingredients such as vitamin C and retinol. Retinol can absorb scattered free radicals to exert its antioxidant function. There are also many people looking for various ingredients from plants. After all, this is one of the basic abilities of plants.

04 Causes of facial aging - cell components and barrier damage

This category aims to supplement the components of cells and increase the cell barrier to enhance the skin's resistance to external damage. For example, ceramide is an important structural component of our skin's stratum corneum. 40%-50% of the sebum in the intercellular lipids of the stratum corneum is composed of ceramide, and supplementing ceramide can naturally have an effect.

Then there are ingredients like the star filler hyaluronic acid, which, of course, has a more popular name - hyaluronic acid, which is highly absorbent and can therefore also retain the skin's moisture.

These ingredients are basically important ingredients in various skin care products that we often see. In many cases, a product even includes multiple anti-aging ingredients. So what is the anti-aging effect? ​​If we simply look at the intuitive anti-aging effect, it is indeed obvious, even immediate, and effective in a short period of time, which has led many people to be very obsessed with it. However, you will definitely feel that once you stop using this type of skin care products, it will quickly return to its previous state.

Why is this so? In essence, this is a form of "formal anti-aging", which belongs to the type of supplementing what is lacking. For example, when the skin lacks collagen, it supplements collagen, and when it lacks hyaluronic acid, it supplements hyaluronic acid. But fundamentally, why do these components in our skin disappear? There seems to be few root-specific solutions in the above examples , so the result is that once the supplementation stops, the skin will quickly return to its original state of lack of components. To deal with this problem, root anti-aging is needed.

05 Root anti-aging is the key

To achieve this goal, we cannot simply rely on external supplements, but we must activate our own anti-aging ability. We must know that these ingredients can be synthesized by the body's cells themselves, but as we age, the body's synthetic ability cannot keep up with the loss rate, so aging occurs. Therefore, root anti-aging is the key.

However, anti-aging from the root cause is a difficult problem in itself, otherwise it would not have been the tireless pursuit of people from ancient times to the present. It is also a difficult problem that modern scientists are trying to break through.

There are two mainstream ideas now. The first is to find the factors and mechanisms of aging. This is the problem that our scientists are working hard to solve. It basically belongs to the academic field of pure scientific exploration, just like the changes in Hallmark cognition of aging we mentioned earlier, such as genome instability, loss of cell homeostasis, and a series of other problems.

The second is to explore the root anti-aging ingredients, determine their anti-aging effects, and further explore the mechanisms behind them.

Interestingly, you may think that the first one is more reasonable and the second one is like looking for a needle in a haystack, but in reality, the first scientific exploration mechanism is still being explored. The second one is moving faster, and many applications have emerged. This is indeed a phenomenon worthy of attention. Maybe there are too many unknowns in science, but history is real, and many people have used it and it works. This is the mainstream situation in medicine, just like the discovery of willow anti-inflammatory - the application of willow bark extract acetylsalicylic acid (also known as aspirin), and then in the 20th century, people had the ability to explore the biological mechanism behind it, and in recent years, new effects of aspirin have been further discovered.

Well, that’s all for today. Later I will continue to tell you what anti-aging active ingredients are contained in skin care products, what effects do they have, and a series of other questions. Please continue to pay attention!

Ref.

1 López-Otín, C., Blasco, MA, ,et al. (2013). The hallmarks of aging. Cell, 153(6), 1194-1217.

2 López-Otín, C., Blasco, MA, , et al.. (2023). Hallmarks of aging: An expanding universe. Cell, 186(2), 243-278.