Healthy glowing skin for everyone! No. 1 :)

…it’s my first official thematic post! Yaaaay! I feel weirdly nervous, almost like a freshman in high school not knowing if anyone would even like to read what I have to say…but I’ll take the risk to see what happens!

So I decided to write about skin and skincare first because skin is our largest organ and I feel like there is already too much information that can be severely confusing, and still many people don’t know how to treat their skin at all. That’s all thanks to lack of important knowledge. But luckily you have come to the right place! :)

*Back – to – school section*

My lovely pupils we shall repeat some anatomy basics first. How many of you know how is skin layered? Or maybe how many layers of cells build it? Or even what other structures can we find in it beside skin cells? As I am a fearless bastard I would dare to say not many of you, who aren’t exactly forced to recite every last fact about it by your professors in school. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not being judgemental at all as I was once just like you. But allow me to explain why this kind of knowledge is very important in the whole process of your daily skin care routine:

1.        For example to determine your right skin type you have to know how thick your skin actually is… oily skin is way thicker than gentle dry skin, which means it’s going to be more resistant to external influences whether it’s the winter cold or you operating with your pimples.

2.       You have to know which structures also lay in your skin, where and how deep, to be able to recognize different changes on your skin (clogged pores or hair follicle, changing dots etc.).

3.       It is also important to know how the skin regenerating process works.

4.       And of course what conditions have effect on your skin, in what way and how big is their impact on health of your skin.

Ok first of all let me tell you what are actually the basic roles of our skin:

­ *It protects our inside organs from the outer influences such as physical shocks (beatings, cuts, wind, cold…) and chemical influences (bacteria, sun rays and many other that can change skins natural structure).

­ *It represents the border between your inside and outside world

­*It prevents water form evaporating out of your body

­*It regulates normal body temperature with sweat secretion (and also secrets fat which forms clogged pores when excretion is excessive).

­*And at last it is the most sensitive sensory organ.

Now skin is basically built out of three "large" layers. Epidermis, Dermis and Hypodermis. The most outer one is Epidermis and the deepest one is Hypodermis.

Epidermis is the one you see on the inside. It is made of epithelial cells which are put firmly together and build strong and resistant outer layer. These cells are divided into 8 different layers which differ in their tasks. The most outer one is made of dead cells, sweat, fat and dirt, which mainly serves as a shield against weather, other conditions and bacteria. We usually clean this layer with cleansing milk and peelings. The deeper we go into the epidermis, the more living cells we find. The important fact here is to know, that the skin needs from 28 to 60 days to replace all the cells from the bottom to the top layer and we try to speed up this process with peelings.

In Epidermis we also find cells that give our skin its colour. These are called Melanocytes and they produce pigment called melanin. (The places where we have darker birthmarks or dots/spots, melanocytes produced more melanin than usual-but this is completely normal to some level… I will write more about abnormalities some other time if you’d like).

Moving on to the next section – Dermis. This is the middle layer which is made out of 3 different layers of cells and is extremely important for outer appearance of your skin. It contains collagen which gives firmness/resistance and elastin which gives flexibility; they represent two most important parts of connective tissue. If your skin lacks of one of them, it becomes wrinkly, loses its tone and becomes dehydrated.

We find many other structures here as well such as blood and lymphatic vessels, sweat and sebaceous glands, nerve cells, hair follicle and also muscles. The main purpose of Dermis is thermoregulation, sensation and giving the skin its tone and tension.

The most inner part of our skin is Hypodermis. Mainly it is made of fat cells and connective tissue which take care of our constant body temperature and protect deeper parts of our body, as well as provide food supply, keep water inside the body and give the skin its tone. Connective tissue keeps the fat cells within their right position…if they escape, the cellulite begins to appear, but that’s another story. :)

Well I think that’s more than enough information to take in for now. I hope you learned something new and useful and make sure you’re back to read what I have to say about skin types, how to determine yours, what products I like the most as well as what suits your type to use for home care. 

B-Dazzled until next time! D*