What Lies Beneath The Skin

Remember the youthful taunt, “Your epidermis is showing!”? Were you fooled into frantically covering yourself, only to realize that the epidermis is the scientific term of the outermost layer of skin? In fact, not only is your epidermis showing, but so is everybody’s epidermis! As long as your epidermis is showing, why not put to use good practices to make sure it is appearing at its’ best?
One of the reasons skin anti wrinkle creams are such a popular item is because no one wants to have their wrinkles showing. Wrinkles are the first visible sign of aging. No one wants to look older than their real age, so that is why anti wrinkle treatments are such a booming market. But to understand aging, we need to look beneath the skin.
If we imagine skin like the layers of an onion, the outermost layer, the epidermis, is the visible layer. It is the barrier that covers our entire body. It is thin, only measuring on average a millimeter (mm) of thickness. The epidermis consists mainly of keratinocytes, but also has melanocytes (cells responsible for producing skin pigment) and sensory cells that respond to touch and those that have immune functions. Keratinocytes, as the name suggests, produce keratin, a protein that gives flexibility to skin and helps waterproof the skin surface. As cells dies, they are pushed upwards towards the surface of the skin. The uppermost surface does not have a vascular supply, and most dead cells are found there.
The layer beneath the epidermis is the dermis. It can be up to 3 mm thick. This layer contains collagen, elastin and reticular fibers. These proteins form the lattice-like structural support that is so important in keeping skin flexible, firm, and elastic. This layer also has capillaries that directly feed and nourish the lower layers of the epidermis. The dermis is often called the “true skin.”
Beneath the epidermis, the lowest lining layer is the subcutaneous fat. This also provides some structure to skin. As we age and lose the fat, our skin also tends to sag.
The epidermis is pocked with minuscule openings called pores. There are also hair follicles and sebaceous glands. The sebaceous glands produce oil that naturally lubricates skin. As you may suspect, as we age, hormones change and we produce less oil from these glands. This also adds to skin wrinkles and aging.
Now that you have a basic understanding of skin biology, you will see that all components from each layer of skin has a role to play in the development of skin wrinkles. Though anti wrinkle creams can temporarily plump up the outermost epidermal layers, many times the damage has occurred in the lower layers. Loss of collagen and elastin in the dermal layers leads to skin wrinkles. The lack of keratin-producing cells in the epidermal layers also decreases skin flexibility, causing wrinkles. Thus, wrinkles appear on the surface, but the cause actually lies in what is beneath the skin.