Achieving beautiful, supple and young-looking skin takes work. It starts with using a good cleansing system along with the appropriate moisturizers’ and serums for your skin type. Making regular visits to the office is also important, but you ask, why does our skin age? Blame it on hormones.
Hormones are mostly to blame for changes to the skin as we age. Hormones are chemical messengers produced in organs such as the ovaries, adrenal glands, and thyroid glands, and all effect other tissues.
As menopause occurs, estrogen is reduced and while it affects thinning bones, it also creates significant changes in the skin. Women discover:
• their skin becomes drier with increased wrinkles
• their skin becomes more fragile, loses some of its elasticity, and is looser because the production of collagen is reduced
• older skin appears paler as the lack of estrogen reduces the number of blood vessels in the skin
• menopause also causes a reduction in the level of testosterone but not as significant a drop as in estrogen
Hormones and dry skin. Another hormone we have is thyroxin, produced by the thyroid gland, which influences skin appearance. Too much thyroxin shows a warm, smooth, sweaty, flushed skin. Under activity of thyroxin produces a dry, coarse thickening of skin with reduced ability to sweat.
Hormones affect acne. The oil glands of the skin are in part controlled by the level and activity of the hormone testosterone in the skin. Testosterone is required to produce acne. We can see this outcome in conditions such as polycystic ovary syndrome, which produce some elevation in testosterone, which in turn causes increased facial hair, irregular periods and acne. It has also been found that some birth control pills can block testosterone skin reactors to improve some consequences of increasing hormone levels.