Why does skin age?

There are so many anti-aging skin care products available today that many people are probably facing a dilemma in choosing. Many people tend to listen to other people's recommendations when choosing, but the effect can only be experienced by themselves. In fact, it is definitely worthwhile to spend a little time to understand the secrets of anti-aging skin care products in the future.

We need to explore the common principles of skin anti-aging from the perspective of deepening cognition, which is also the target of all anti-aging products.

01. The most intuitive factor: loss of skin components

The loss of skin components is probably the most familiar cause of aging to you. For example, collagen is the main protein component in human skin. A series of collagen molecules are tightly combined to form an elastic structure. Our skin's firmness and elasticity are related to it. Once collagen is gradually lacking with age, obvious signs of aging will occur, such as wrinkles and loss of elasticity.

Of course, in addition to collagen, there are other ingredients, such as sodium hyaluronate, which is the famous hyaluronic acid, which is also an important component of the skin.

Therefore, basically all anti-aging products contain ingredients that promote the production of skin components such as collagen. From an application perspective, this is also easy to produce immediate results.

It is indeed an easy-to-understand and easy-to-accept principle to replenish what you lack. However, why is it that after using it, we still cannot reverse the aging of the skin?

In fact, this involves the factors behind it, that is: the aging of skin cells.

02. Advanced understanding of aging - aging of skin cells

The loss of skin cell components is essentially caused by skin aging, and behind this is essentially the aging of cells.

This is also inevitable for cell development. After all, as time goes by, various damages are affecting the cells, and the cells' own repair ability is constantly declining. As a result, the cells begin to show signs of aging. Once cells begin to age, the synthesis and secretion of cell components such as collagen are bound to decline, resulting in the appearance of signs of skin aging.

Therefore, if the problem of cell aging can be solved, the problem of skin aging can be solved to a certain extent.

However, this is not easy. Aging is a very cutting-edge scientific problem. Countless scientists are working hard to explore the factors of aging such as molecular mechanisms, and are also trying to find some components that can alleviate cell aging to a certain extent. However, the progress is not very smooth. At present, some molecular components such as siRNA and active proteins have shown certain application prospects, but more research is needed to promote further understanding of anti-aging.

So, is it really hopeless?

Actually, this is not the case.

Although it is difficult for us to solve the problem of aging directly, the onset of aging is not completely without trace. In fact, there are many factors that induce or even accelerate aging. Therefore, if we can solve the factors that cause aging accordingly, then we can alleviate aging to a certain extent, and this is much easier.

03. A feasible approach - solving the causes of aging

What factors may cause aging?

After years of research, some factors that may cause aging have been revealed. We will briefly introduce them.

External stimuli.

As the outermost layer of the human body, the skin is directly affected by the external environment, whether it is temperature changes or environmental pollution, especially ultraviolet rays. Ultraviolet radiation is harmful to skin cells, causing a series of cell damage, and is also an important factor leading to skin aging. Therefore, sun protection is a very important step in anti-aging.

2. Internal metabolic disorder

As part of the human organism, skin cells are also affected by the body's internal metabolism. For example, irregular work and rest habits and unhealthy diet will eventually be reflected on the skin through hormones, leading to skin aging. Therefore, to deal with skin aging, a regular life and a healthy body are also basic guarantees.

However, there is one thing that is easily overlooked, that is: skin microecology.

04. Skin Microecology: An Overlooked but Critical Anti-Aging Target

What is the skin microbiome?

It refers to a stable ecology formed by skin microorganisms over a long period of time. Our skin is directly exposed to the environment, so there are many microorganisms, such as bacteria, fungi, parasites and viruses. These microorganisms live on the skin for a long time and coexist with the human body, so they are called resident bacteria; there are also some microorganisms that occasionally come to the skin temporarily, which are called transient bacteria.

In a healthy skin microecology, our skin is a stable microecology formed by resident bacteria, our tissues, cells, various secretions and microenvironment, which jointly maintain the health of the skin. However, if due to various factors, such as changes in pH, temperature, humidity and light caused by external factors such as drugs, cosmetics, trauma, etc., or internal factors such as changes in secretions caused by metabolic disorders, then the balance of the skin's microecology will be destroyed, and temporary bacteria will take the opportunity to enter, causing an imbalance in the skin's microecology, and skin problems will begin to appear.

In fact, throughout the aging process, the skin microecology shows overall changes, including changes in both the types and scale of microorganisms.

For example, a team studied the microecological flora on the skin surface of volunteers of different age groups and found that there were obvious differences in the microbial flora on the skin surface of the three age groups of 26+, 32+, and 46+:

The composition ratio and diversity of skin microecological flora in different age groups are different. As age increases, the diversity of skin microecological flora shows an upward trend, which to some extent reflects the increase of bacteria in the surface layer of the skin with aging.

These changes will have corresponding effects on the skin itself. For example, the number of beneficial bacteria decreases and the number of harmful bacteria increases during the aging process. This means that with age, the secretion of microorganisms that are beneficial to the skin decreases, the nutritional effect on the skin decreases, and the skin's ability to resist the invasion of harmful pathogens also decreases. These changes are like our city walls. Maintenance decreases and damage increases. The end result is that the skin barrier gradually decreases, and the resistance to both exogenous and endogenous damage decreases, which ultimately leads to more severe skin damage and more serious aging.

Therefore, in response to skin aging, maintenance of the skin’s microecology is a factor that is easily overlooked but very critical.

05. How to maintain skin microecology?

The answer is to adjust through microbial metabolites - postbiotics

How can resident bacteria stay and resist the invasion of transient bacteria? This is not the process of how resident bacteria devour transient bacteria, but by secreting a series of metabolites to kill transient bacteria, thereby maintaining the skin microecology, which is the familiar postbiotics. Therefore, if the skin microecology is damaged, then directly using the metabolites of resident bacteria may be the most effective.

In general, aging is a process that intensifies over time. In our daily lives, we must not only take good care of our skin, but also protect it to reduce damage to the skin, so that the skin can perform better.