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Thin Skin - Causes, Symptoms and Therapy
contents
- Skin: our largest organ
- When does skin look nice??
- Causes of thinner skin
- parchment skin
- skin care
- wounds
- Dermis and epidermis
- External factors
- Which substances help?
- What to do?
Skin: our largest organ
The skin is the largest organ, almost two square meters and weighing up to 20 kg. One square centimeter contains 15 sebaceous glands, 100 sweat glands, 3,000 nerve endings, 1 meter blood vessels, and several million cells.
Thin skin can be a sign of various diseases. Image: Astrid Gast- Fotolia The skin protects the internal organs, muscles and bones from external damage. It keeps the system body together and marks a clear boundary to the environment. It acts as a shield against viruses, bacteria and fungi, heat, sun, cold and attacks.
This "wall of protection" is also extremely active. The skin forms vitamin D from the sun's rays, it carries water and fat into the organism.
The "skin filter" can be used medically: creams, oils, lotions healing baths and healing earth applied to the skin, provide the body with well doing substances. Hormone patches or nicotine patches work through the skin.
Skin cells indicate the temperature, inform the brain of pain stimuli and shield UV light.
When does skin look nice??
Skin is considered beautiful if its pores are small, with no scales, pimples or boils on it, if it reflects the light evenly, contains a little fat, shines and wrinkles. Too much fat on the skin is considered as unaesthetic as dry skin.
Evolutionary, our perception is well explained: dandruff, pimples and boils may indicate basic diseases, a dry and dull skin on the one hand to age, secondly also on diseases - or both.
Causes of thinner skin
Thin skin is often not a disease, but a symptom of a basic disease. Metabolic and circulatory disorders may also be associated with dilute skin. Such an underlying disease can also be recognized by the specific condition of the skin: In the case of a liver disorder, the diluted skin, for example, turns yellowish, and the mucous membranes and tongue are also affected.
Thinner skin can also indicate a Lyme disease. In Lyme disease, especially arms and legs are affected.
Rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease and butterfly patches also result in a thin skin, as well as skin diseases such as psoriasis and atopic dermatitis. The immune system attacks the body's own tissue because it classifies it as "foreign". So far no one knows how these diseases develop.
On the other hand, we know the cause of Cushing's syndrome: it's caused by too much cortisol - a hormone. The parchment skin is here only a symptom, plus strong thirst, muscle weakness, acne and boils.
Cortisone, a cortisol drug that is given as a medicine, also dilutes the skin, and insulin, which is used to inject patients with diabetes mellitus, also promotes parchment skin.
parchment skin
Age is not a disease; our skin is already aging in young adulthood, which makes it thinner. We can not stop this process, but mitigate it.
Aging means to the skin that the papillae change between epidermis and dermis. Blood vessels in these papillae supply the epidermis with nutrients, oxygen and fluid. In young people, these papillae are close to each other and are long - the skin is plump and smooth. In older people, the papillae flatten and become less.
The older we get, the less collagen and elastin the body makes, and so the skin loses its elasticity: we get wrinkles.
Nutrients and oxygen now only slowly enter the upper skin layer: our skin looks dull.
skin care
For example, those who already suffer from the so-called parchment skin can use lukewarm water instead of hot water. Too warm water dries out the skin. Soft towels protect the dry skin, the affected people should dab them instead rub off. When showering recommend moisturizing products.
Water-in-oil emulsions are suitable for thin skin and support the balance between fat and moisture. Such remedies should be free of perfume and alcohol as both dry out the skin even further.
Older people often forget to drink. In this way, they promote that the skin becomes thinner and thinner. In between drinking a glass of water helps.
wounds
Thin skin, on the other hand, hurts more easily than a "thick coat", and second, the wounds heal badly. Even a slight friction, a blow or a shock cause the skin to tear. The injured skin regenerates only slowly.
Wound dressings should have a silicone coating or self-stick, but grease gauze and patches can further rupture the wound.
Dermis and epidermis
Dermis refers to the dermis, epidermis to the surface of the skin. As the skin ages, the epidermis slows down the cell metabolism, and the organism produces less lipids.
The skin becomes rougher and dries. Wrinkles develop and the skin reacts more sensitively to UV rays, wounds heal slower and the body is less able to ward off infections.
At the dermis, the proportion of collagen decreases by 1% per year. The subcutaneous tissue is less elastic and less well supplied with blood.
The skin loses its rosy hue and wrinkles form.
Outwardly, thinner skin shows deeper wrinkles, so the skin loses its shape. It becomes duller and paler.
External factors
Sunlight weakens and dries out the skin, and smoking causes the skin to lose oxygen - and collagen and elastin break down. Smoking thus enhances the natural aging process.
Which substances help?
Skin aging is partly due to oxidative stress. This means, in simple terms, that there are too many compounds that react to oxygen, that is, superoxide anion radical, hydrogen peroxide, and hydroxyl radical.
Normally, cells neutralize oxidants by creating a "depot" with these substances. If they are no longer able to do so, the oxygen-reactive species prevent detoxification of the cell.
Some "beauty companies" advertise with externally applied antioxidants. This is to prevent the loss of skin volume and wrinkles: Arctiin, an active ingredient from the burdock fruit thus promotes the regeneration of skin cells and gives thin skin a stronger resilience, and Apiaceae peptides also improve the resilience of the skin.
Change of the skin with increasing age. Image: designua - fotolia Caution: A benefit from antioxidants in dietary supplements could not be proven in any study. Rather, meta-studies point to the opposite: the reactive oxygen species are presumably not only "toxic waste" but, above all, elementary messengers.
However, antioxidants do not distinguish between "good" and "bad" reactive oxygen species, but act like "the ax in the forest".
What to do?
If a doctor successfully treats the underlying disease, the skin will also regenerate. On the other hand, aging skin can not be "cured".
They can prevent a thin skin with sufficient movement, little alcohol and cigarettes, moisturizing creams and a sparing use of sun and solariums. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)
Specialist supervision: Barbara Schindewolf-Lensch (doctor)