bpcq
Iron
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- Aug 26, 2024
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So much time and effort on here is focused on the exciting actives and procedures for maintaining collagen, and while that is absolutely important, maintaining skin health should be your first priority. Get a good routine down with cleansing, moisturising and protecting with SPF, then get started on including the actives.
The aim of the game here is to maximise skin hydration and minimise transepidermal water loss (TEWL). TEWL is the diffusion of water through the skin and skin hydration is the water content of the stratum corneum (the outer few layers of skin cells). When skin is damaged, TEWL increases. This makes the original issue worse as the water loss further decreases the skin barrier function and we end up in a vicious cycle. Skin without water will crack and peel, which means that the skin cells will be shed more quickly than normal. This leads to an increase in the cell production rate at the bottom layers of your epidermis. When the growth cycle is accelerated like this, the skin becomes even more compromised as the cells have not had sufficient time to fully mature and are therefore not effective at preventing water loss. Just throwing a ton of water at your skin won’t fix the issue here though, and the brick and mortar model is great at demonstrating why.
The “bricks” are corneocytes (skin cells in the stratum corneum), which contain a substance called natural moisturising factor (NMF). NMF is a complicated mixture of compounds which acts as a natural humectant (a substance which attracts and then traps water), allowing the corneocytes to remain hydrated even though they are constantly under stress from the environment. However, NMF is water soluble so it is easily leached from the corneocytes when the skin is repeatedly exposed to water. The “mortar” (lipids) consists of a mix of ceramides, free fatty acids and cholesterol which do a really good job of protecting and sealing the corneocyte to prevent the loss of NMF. So in order to prevent TEWL, we must also try to keep the lipids intact. Again, these lipids can be stripped from the skin if harsh surfactants are used or we overcleanse.
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The aim of the game here is to maximise skin hydration and minimise transepidermal water loss (TEWL). TEWL is the diffusion of water through the skin and skin hydration is the water content of the stratum corneum (the outer few layers of skin cells). When skin is damaged, TEWL increases. This makes the original issue worse as the water loss further decreases the skin barrier function and we end up in a vicious cycle. Skin without water will crack and peel, which means that the skin cells will be shed more quickly than normal. This leads to an increase in the cell production rate at the bottom layers of your epidermis. When the growth cycle is accelerated like this, the skin becomes even more compromised as the cells have not had sufficient time to fully mature and are therefore not effective at preventing water loss. Just throwing a ton of water at your skin won’t fix the issue here though, and the brick and mortar model is great at demonstrating why.
The “bricks” are corneocytes (skin cells in the stratum corneum), which contain a substance called natural moisturising factor (NMF). NMF is a complicated mixture of compounds which acts as a natural humectant (a substance which attracts and then traps water), allowing the corneocytes to remain hydrated even though they are constantly under stress from the environment. However, NMF is water soluble so it is easily leached from the corneocytes when the skin is repeatedly exposed to water. The “mortar” (lipids) consists of a mix of ceramides, free fatty acids and cholesterol which do a really good job of protecting and sealing the corneocyte to prevent the loss of NMF. So in order to prevent TEWL, we must also try to keep the lipids intact. Again, these lipids can be stripped from the skin if harsh surfactants are used or we overcleanse.
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