The skin - mirror of your soul

The skin - mirror of your soul

We all have one. We wear it out, we are unhappy with it, we are happy when it shines. We are constantly looking for creams and lotions to give it that look. Skin surrounds our body like a protective shield. Our skin is our first bastion against invaders like dirt and pathogens. It is our shell in which we want to feel comfortable and which gives other people a first impression of us in addition to our gestures and facial expressions.

The skin is our largest organ. The human body is surrounded by about 1.8 m2 of skin.

The large surface area is important:

What we take in through the skin has the same value as the food we drink and eat.

It is therefore essential to think about what we apply to the skin, because the substances are absorbed. They do not remain on the skin like a film and are simply washed off again in the shower. And speaking of showering: Of course, we all want to smell pleasant, but the daily use of cleansers on the skin is not conducive to this.

The skin's important protective acid mantle is disturbed in its balance. Experts therefore advise showering only every two to three days and not using any cleansing agents.

 

The Hydra as a role model - How our skin renews itself

The Hydra is an ingenious creature. Body parts that die or are lost are constantly growing back. Its amazing ability to regenerate comes from the fact that the hydra constantly replaces damaged body cells instead of repairing them. As a result, there is almost no wear and tear or ageing effect.

The same processes take place in our skin:

New skin cells are constantly being formed in the basal cell layer. They migrate upwards through the prickle cell layer into the horny layer. During this process, which lasts about 30 days, the cells of the skin are transformed: from living cells with nucleus, cell organelles and cytoplasm into horny cells.

Once outside, these cells contain keratin. We can imagine how important this is because some regions, such as hand and foot treads, are subject to heavy wear and tear and therefore need a resistant skin.

The shape of the cells changes during their outward migration. The formerly cubic cells become flatter and flatter - until they are present in the horny layer as epithelial cells.

These metabolic processes occur relatively slowly, which is an advantage if the supply of nutrients and oxygen should be interrupted.

As we age, our skin's ability to regenerate slows down. That's why you can read the age of our skin, albeit to different degrees for everyone.

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to boost our skin's ability to regenerate even as we age?

This goes through and through - transport of substances into and through the skin

There are two ways into the skin: by diffusion through the skin layer OR by diffusion through the pores.

Pores are openings in the skin where sebaceous and sweat glands or hairs have their outlets. Diffusion through the pores is not very effective because the proportion of pores on the surface of the skin is too small to ensure an effective introduction of substances. The path through the horny layer of the skin is therefore the more effective one for most substances.

The big question is: "Around the outside or through the cells? Which is better?"

The path through the horny cells of the horny layer is laborious and is therefore not favoured by cosmetic and pharmaceutical manufacturers. The horny cells are too dry. Neither fat-soluble nor water-soluble substances have an easy time getting through these cells.

So around it. Between the cells, as they form the outermost layer of the cornea as a loose bandage, is a pathway to deeper layers of the skin, because in order to make a medicine or cosmetic bioavailable, the essential substance must arrive where it can optimally develop its respective effect. Bioavailability is a unit of measurement that describes how much of a substance is available to the body and how quickly. Ideally, this is 100%.

Many little helpers

There are many active ingredients that need to be applied cosmetically to the skin. The skin on the face is much thinner than on the rest of the body and is more exposed to weather influences. Therefore, skin renewal is of particular importance here.

The faster the skin renews itself, the less you can see that it has to endure wind and weather. Here again, Hydra gives us the advantage.

Of course, diet and lifestyle play the biggest role here. If you smoke, drink, sleep little and stress yourself out, even the best cream will not be successful. You shouldn't fool yourself. The body is a system of interwoven dynamics. Nothing can be considered in isolation, as in the case of a watch, for example - if a cogwheel breaks down, you replace it. If a part of our body breaks down (example: organ transplant), it can be replaced, but then we have to keep the system in peace for the rest of our lives with medication, which has considerable disadvantages.

Metabolism keeps the wheel turning

The skin can therefore not be considered in isolation. Nevertheless, we can have a supporting influence on its ability to regenerate. This is where enzymes come into play.

Enzymes are biocatalysts that are responsible for many metabolic processes in our body. They break down food building blocks and make them available for our body. They are proteins that can cleave other proteins, for example in the digestion of food. There are 5 major groups of enzymes: peptidases, lactases, glycosidases, lipases and nucleases. Peptidases split proteins into smaller units (amino acids), lactases split lactose, glycosidases split sugar, lipases split fats and nucleases split nucleic acids.

Our body's own fountain of youth - Nothing works without trypsin

We want to take a closer look at a protein-cleaving enzyme, trypsin. Trypsin is found in our small intestine and breaks down incoming protein particles into smaller units. If we have a deficiency of trypsin, the long-term result is malnutrition due to protein deficiency. Trypsin is also found in the skin. It is responsible for binding the skin cells in the epidermis to each other.

Trypsin deactivates harmful microorganisms, such as bacteria and viruses, which consist of proteins. As a biocatalyst, trypsin accelerates cell renewal processes in the skin, resulting in radiant skin.

The fountain of youth can be fired up

Trypsin also actively supports bioprocesses in creatures that live in very cold environments.

What is interesting here is that the enzyme from the cold experiences an increase in its activity when it encounters higher temperatures, for example at human body temperature.

So if we introduce trypsin into our skin, our skin renewal processes accelerate. Skin impurities, wrinkles and pigmentation disorders decrease.

The skin is like new !