What Causes Unhealthy Skin?

People change their skincare products when their skin is unhealthy. Actually, skincare products may not be the main cause of unhealthy skin. The biggest damages of your skin come from the environment. You may not get yourself the right type of skincare products without understanding these enemies. Free radical is probably skin’s biggest enemy. Free radicals are unstable molecules and atoms which tend to combine with stable ones.

The effect of the combination of unstable free radicals to skin cells can be “disastrous”. Skin cells become injured and irritated and different cell parts, cell walls ad collagen fibres may die. But, young and healthy defence system can scavenge and neutralize these free radicals.

Though our natural defence system can neutralize the free radicals, there is a limit. That means such natural defence system cannot neutralize all the free radicals if there are too many. The free radicals from air pollution, cigarette smoke, pesticides, poor diet, illness and stress finally cause our skin to be dry, sensitive, inelastic and unhealthy.

Sunlight is the other big enemy to our skin and yet it is unavoidable. The UV radiations damages protein fibres, thickens the epidermis and can cause skin cancer. Heat from the sun also causes moisture loss in skin, leaving it dry and sensitive.

Other than heat from the sun, heat from the general environmental (e.g. central heating) may lead to water evaporation from the skin. On the other hand, cold air from outdoor and air conditioning is also dry and dehydrating. Such moisture loss is unable to be compensated by skin’s normal sebum and moisture production. Therefore, the resulted skin may be parched, flaky and cracked.

Internal factor, for example hormone can sometimes be an enemy of skin. Hormone affects the production of sebum and moisture level of skin. Oestrogen, a sex hormone acts as a natural humectants of skin. When Oestrogen decreases with age, our skin becomes dry and sensitive. The use of poor skincare products may also strip the natural sebum off from our skin. This causes dry, irritated and scratchy skin.

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Key Skin Components

The two most important yet natural secrets to healthy skin are sebum (natural skin oil) and moisture. Sebum are produced and secreted in tiny glands (sebaceous glands) around every hair on your body. Sebum plays an important role in skin and hair healthy by keeping hairs and skin supple, binding the skin’s top layer of dead cells and barricading moisture in, bacteria out.

Water is essential for every living cell. It also gives skin a full and moist look. Hyaluronic acid, one of the hottest ingredients in many skincare products, is the natural humectants of skin. It attracts water from the air and binds it to the skin.

Sweating is a physiological mechanism of human body to regulate body temperature. Indeed, the sweat, produced by sweat glands in our skin also offers protective function to our skin. An acid mantle is formed when sweat is mixed with sebum. Such acid mantle forms a natural barrier to harmful bacteria.

In chemical view, we use pH value to describe the acidity or alkalinity of our skin. pH value ranges from pH 1 to pH 14, with pH1 the most acidic; pH14 the most alkaline and pH 7 as neutral. Because of the combination of sebum and sweat, our skin is not neutral, but naturally pH 5.4-6.2. Skincare products with pH of 4 may provide extra protection against bacteria.

Another key component of skin is Melanin. From many advertisements of skincare products, you probably know that melanin is the dark pigment of our skin. Melanin granules colour our skin in varying shades of brown from pale to black. The more melanin the darker is our skin.

Melanin is actually a natural protective component apart from color determinant of our skin. Melanin protects us from sun burn by screening out UV radiations from the sun. Of course, we still need to apply sun care products to provide sufficient protection to our skin.

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