Here at CV Skinlabs, we’ve been talking about healthy skin for years.
Take good care of your skin and it will not only look better but feel and act better, too, because it will be healthier.
Well now, a new study has come out supporting everything we’ve been saying. According to researchers, age-damaged skin could be a contributing factor to age-related diseases.
Surprised? We weren’t. Here’s more.
Could Reducing Inflammation in the Skin Help Prevent Disease?
The study came out just a couple of months ago. Scientists from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) were curious about age-related changes in the skin, and how they might affect the rest of the body.
We already know that so-called “systemic” inflammation, which is chronic inflammation inside the body, has been linked with cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer’s disease. Scientists have been trying to find ways to reduce that inflammation, but so far the options are limited.
Yes, we can eat healthier foods, ease stress, and try anti-inflammatory vitamin and herbal supplements, but scientists wanted to find an even more effective way to reduce that dangerous inflammation.
Could reducing inflammation in skin help, they wondered? They’d already found that “epidermal dysfunction”—unhealthy skin—largely contributed to age-associated increases in inflammatory substances circulating in the blood. They had also found that improving epidermal function helped reduce levels of those substances.
So they decided to perform a study to see what they could find.
Study Shows a Healthy Skin Barrier May Help Reduce Risk of Disease
The scientists recruited 33 older veteran participants and compared them against untreated, older participants as well as a control group of young volunteers. At the start of the study, the older participants had higher levels of inflammatory markers in their blood versus the younger volunteers.
“Aged humans exhibit chronic, subclinical systemic inflammation,” Dr. Mao-Quiang Man, the study’s senior author and dermatologist at UCSF, told Healthline, “commonly termed ‘inflamm-aging,’ which has been further linked to the downstream emergence of a variety of age-associated chronic disorders, including cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis and Alzheimer’s disease.”
For 30 days, the scientists treated the 33 aged veterans with 3 mL of a skin moisturizer that had been previously shown to improve skin function. After the 30 days were up, they performed skin tests in these participants and compared them against the controls.
Results showed that the moisturizer significantly enhanced the skin’s barrier function, which is the outer layer’s ability to protect itself. It also increased skin hydration. Best of all, blood levels of those inflammatory markers declined substantially.
The researchers concluded that more research should be done to determine whether healthy skin function could reduce circulating inflammatory substance levels in older people, while also potentially helping to reduce the risk of developing inflammatory disorders like cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s.
Take Care of Your Skin…and It Will Take Care of You!
The study results make perfect sense to us because we know that preserving the barrier of the skin is key not only to looking younger, but protecting the skin and the body. Basic hydration helps a lot, as dry skin develops tiny cracks that weaken the barrier and make the skin vulnerable to attacks from free radicals, UV rays, and more.
We take an additional step by including natural anti-inflammatories in our products. All of our CV Skinlabs products contain ingredients that help reduce inflammation, so they’re hydrating and fighting inflammation at the same time.
Should the results of this study prove to hold true in future research, that means our products may help you not only maintain the health of your skin, but your overall health as you age.
And we think that’s pretty exciting! How about you?
Did you know that healthy skin could contribute to a healthy body?
Sources
Gray, D. (2019, March 20). Why Moisturizing Your Skin Helps Prevent Age-Related Diseases. Retrieved from https://www.healthline.com/health-news/moisturizing-your-skin-may-help-prevent-age-related-diseases?utm_content=buffer76de3&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Ye, L., Mauro, T., Dang, E., Wang, G., Hu, L., Yu, C., … Man, M. (2019). Topical applications of an emollient reduce circulating pro‐inflammatory cytokine levels in chronically aged humans: a pilot clinical study. Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology. doi:10.1111/jdv.15540
