Put an End to Chronic Exfoliation
Are you struggling with chronic skin exfoliation? Do you feel like your skin is constantly inflamed and sensitive? You’re not alone. Millions of people are dealing with dry, itchy skin caused by chronic exfoliation on a daily basis.Our skin has two parts, the epidermis, which protects us from the environment, and the dermis, which builds the structure of our skin.
Our dermis thins at a rate of about 1% a year from the age of 25.
To protect the dermis, the epidermis naturally slows desquamation and thickens. We must maintain the density and integrity of the epidermis, loss of epidermal integrity will eventually lead to extreme trans-epidermal water loss, dehydration, wrinkles, and an impaired immune system.
The dermis is where all the skin's nutrients end up, and the dermis has to decide which nutrients go where. Even while the dermis is thinning, dealing with poor nutrient foods, and environmental exposure, it still sends those scarce supplies up to the epidermis to keep it nourished, because the epidermis does not have its own blood supply nor source of nourishment.
The dermis thins because it is overwhelmed with free radicals, oxidative stress, lack of nutrients, lack of hydration, and overall inflammation, all resulting from sun, diet, lifestyle, and stress, all in addition to the passage of time which slows everything down anyway. As a result of this, the target has become the epidermis and it’s slowing rate of epidermal turnover, which slows from 30 days to longer periods as we get older.
The question you should ask is WHY does the epidermal turnover slow down? The answer is simple – IT CANNOT THIN. And with its own food supply from the dermis becoming more and more scarce, the only logical thing to do is to slow down. This is where the beauty industry went wrong - thinking a slowing epidermis just needed help to go faster, that somehow it did not know what it was doing and needed outside intervention.
There is no question that exfoliating the epidermis does indeed speed cell turnover, but this is not in the best interest of the skin because the skin is rushing to fix the epidermal damage, to the detriment of the dermis. When the dermis is forced to fix the damaged epidermis, it must now divert scarce nutrients and exhausting repair activity that it would have used to maintain itself. This leads us to the possible conclusion that chronic exfoliation accelerates aging!
When we look at the research on what chronic exfoliation does, the mild but temporary improvements seem meaningless in the face of the long-term damage that results in revving up the signs of aging rather than slowing it. One of the protectors of our skin, the melanocyte, responsible for producing melanin to combat UV radiation can no longer produce as much do to the thinning dermis.
The skin now has less melanin in the overall keratinocytes to protect against UV Radiation
Subsequently, there is a significant increase in the amount of free radical damage to the skin cells and their DNA and this lack of protection extends to the melanocytes themselves, causing them to sustain their own UVR damage and in time, with enough exposure, they will die, leaving unpigmented spots and even more lack of protection to the rest of the skin.
However, there is more damage to repair than chronic exfoliation, in addition to the damage that must be repaired just from daily sun exposure, environmental exposure, diet, lifestyle, chronic stress, and the passage of time, which taxes the stressed and aging dermis.
When the skin is over exfoliated, there is loss of hydration from the loss of protective lamellar lipids, which lie in the upper epidermis where the keratinocyte goes from being a keratinocyte in the granular layer, to being a corneocyte in the corneal (horny) layer. We are better off not second-guessing the skin's decision to slow down; instead, we should work WITH it to restore its normal activities.
The theory of daily exfoliation has been implemented for the last 30+ years. However, there is no evidence that it has benefits to the skin and there is a tremendous amount of evidence to show that it eventually leads to more damage. It is time we try a different approach to restoring the skin's health and repair activities to their full potential.
This is approach is known as Corneotherapy, a restorative skin treatment methodology with its core principle being the repair and maintenance of the skin barriers defense system. Closely related to Corneobiology, which is the physiological, biological and biochemical processes of the stratum corneum; the outermost layer of the epidermis.
It is now widely understood that the outer layer of corneocytes of the stratum corneum is a biologically active cellular tissue. The co-inventor of Retin-A, U.S. dermatologist Dr. Albert Kligman and his partners discovered that the stratum corneum, and the lipid barrier that keeps it intact, play a significant role in skin health; sending many signals to the underlying living epidermis and influences the regenerative processes in deeper layers of the skin.
This understanding of skin health, along with appropriate interventions and topical treatments, is an ensemble of therapies that Dr. Kligman labeled “Corneotherapy”.
Battling chronic exfoliation or want to know how you gift yourself healthy skin? Send us a message, we can set up a customized solution for your skin!
