True Skin Care

Posts Tagged ‘skin cells’

Have you ever noticed when they have those programs on television where they try to make ordinary people off the street look years younger that they always seem to choose people who have been smokers for a long period of time?

There is a very good reason for this and that is because cigarette smoking is one of the biggest causes of skin deterioration along with sun exposure.

Not only does smoking affect your skin condition but being around smokers and having to breathe their secondhand smoke will also affect your own skin condition.

Cigarette smoke contains a high concentration of a compound that destroys the DNA of skin cells and in doing so reduces the ability for those skin cells to renew themselves.

The problems for the smoker are considerable. It is quite easy to spot a smoker from the fine lines that have formed prematurely around the mouth as a result of the action of sucking on cigarettes.

There are generally lines around the eyes from trying to look through the smoke haze.

The nicotine in the cigarettes slows blood circulation and this in turn causes other skin problems including higher rates of skin cancer and an inability to heal if there is ever any damage caused to the skin.

Smokers will usually have thinner dryer skin and an inability to utilize antioxidants that are required for maintaining a healthy skin.

The skin will rapidly begin to look lifeless and will lose its tone with increased smoking.

Only excessive exposure to the sun will cause more damage faster than smoking and a combination of the two will ensure that you look old well beyond your years.

Smokers have skin that is considerably thinner than non-smokers due to the deterioration of collagen and elastin and this is also responsible for the skin sagging.

We are all well aware of the benefits of getting a good night’s sleep but many people don’t understand the importance of sleep for keeping our skin in the best condition possible.

Sleep is the time when the cells of the body are repaired and this includes skin cells.

Studies have shown that sleep deprivation reduces a person’s levels of growth hormone and it is these growth hormones that are required for the repair process.

The less growth hormone that we have the less opportunity the body has to repair the damage that has occurred to the skin throughout the normal course of the day.

The rate of new skin cells that are produced by the body doubles during periods of sleep so the more sleep you get the faster your skin cells will be produced and the younger you are likely to look.

Without this cell regeneration or with cell product reduced below certain levels the skin will tend to become more wrinkled and lose its tone.

While all this might lead you to think that you should be spending more hours in bed you need to consider the effects that too many hours in bed might have on your skin too.

Yes there is always something else to think about and this time it is the way that you sleep. Most people tend to sleep on their side or face down and in doing so their face gets crease marks from the extended time that the face is pushed against the pillow. When we are younger this is not a problem, however as we age and there is less elastin in our skin the crease marks take longer to disappear and if we continue to sleep in the same position every night these marks can remain permanent.

The alternative it to sleep on your back or to get softer pillows and satin pillow slips to reduce the marks.

Contrary to popular belief a photofacial treatment is not the same as a laser face treatment.

A photofacial treatment is more effective than a laser treatment because it has the ability to get deeper into the skin where it can help to treat pigmentation problems and dilated vessels.

The reason for this is due to the type of light that the photofacial machine emits as compared to that of a laser treatment light. Where a laser will emit light over a single wavelength the photofacial machine delivers the light treatment in several wavelengths and this helps to penetrate deeper into the skin without causing damage to the skin cells.

It is at this deeper level that the repair is required to address various skin problems that the laser can’t address.

A photofacial is effective at helping to repair many different problems such as broken capillaries, pigmentation problems, fine lines, rosacea, scarring and more.

One of the benefits of having a photofacial, apart from the fact that you can get positive benefits for the skin, is the speed of the treatment, which generally lasts no more than thirty minutes.

The fact that you can return to your everyday activities immediately after a photofacial treatment adds to its convenience and popularity.

It will generally be necessary for you to wear a sunscreen after the treatment to help protect the skin and in some circumstances there might be some redness or dryness on the treated area and particularly for people who have sensitive skin.

Photofacials aren’t generally a single treatment as the more treatments that are performed the more effective the results will be.

For this reason a person getting a photofacial will be advised to book in for a series of treatments over a period of a few weeks to ensure they get the best results possible.

Dry skin reacts somewhat differently to normal skin when exposed to the sun. It tends to burn more easily and when it does burn it also tends to peel.

This will cause the skin to become itchy and this can also be a problem in colder weather too when the skin can become irritated due to dryness.

Where the skin is particularly dry it can become scaly, and sometimes even chapped which will make the skin quite sore.

People with dry skin often have a fair complexion although it is not reserved just for those who are fair as dry skin can be found on people with any other complexion as well.

The areas across the cheeks and the forehead are those more inclined to become dry and the cheeks will also tend to feel tight after having been cleansed.

There are many factors that contribute to skin being dry and any skin will become somewhat drier as we age. Those factors that can dry the skin can include the weather, the environment that we are living in, the foods that we eat and even the medications that we have.

People with dry skin tend to shed their skin cells in clumps rather than cell by cell as other skin types would do and this is part of the reason why the skin is dry.

It is not solely due to a lack of moisture as many people are lead to believe. Moisturizers will help reduce the dryness of the skin but you will need to be careful to select a moisturizer that will not inhibit the shedding of the skin, as this is one of the causes of the dryness in the first place.

Gently exfoliating the skin can help the moisturizers do their job better but you will also need to be very careful here as well because this can cause skin sensitivities.

Acne is the curse of the teenage face. For most people the problems that they have as a teenager with acne will disappear as they get older but this is not always the case.

There are large numbers of adults who suffer from acne and this can be very distressing to live with.

There are several reasons why adults can get acne and these range from problems such as stress to hormonal problems that can be made worse by medications.

The cause of acne is when the skin pore or hair follicle becomes blocked. This blockage is caused by skin cells that are exfoliated but not completely removed from the skin.

The skin cells block the pores and this forms a plug that traps sebum. This in turn leads to a build up of bacteria and the resultant inflammation of the skin.

There are many more excellent products on the market that can help reduce the incidence of acne in adolescents and adults alike.

The most common treatment is the use of retinoids that are derived from vitamin A.

Retin-A is the most popular of these applications and is a prescription medication but there are other ‘over the counter’ products such as retinol that are also a suitable solution for many people.

These medications work by removing the stickiness in the cell that causes the discarded cells to remain trapped.

By allowing those cells to be freely exfoliated there is no buildup of sebum and a reduction in the incidence of bacteria buildup.

There are other products on the market that assist in unclogging blocked pores by penetrating to the sebaceous matter and some of these products are used in the better quality cleansers.

While you should not expect results overnight you can bring your skin up to a higher level of health by using these cleansers on a regular basis and after a few weeks you should see a reduction in the occurrence of acne whereby the regular use of these products should maintain a healthy and blemish free skin.