SKIN: FUNCTIONAL AS WELL AS ORNAMENTAL

Unless wounded or suffering a rash or whatever, I venture to suggest that people mostly attend to how skin looks. It’s only logical, given that it’s exposed to public view—more or less, depending on culture, sex, age, season, and occasion!

Putting Your Best Face Forward

The good news is this: skin is constantly renewing itself, shedding dead cells and producing new ones. On average, we lose about 30,000 to 40,000 skin cells per minute. You may not see the dead, dull skin flaking off your face and body, but it is, and it contributes significantly to household dust!

It takes about a month for newly formed skin cells to make their way to the surface. The bad news is that renewal takes longer with age: turnover can take as much as six to eight weeks in someone in their 60s or 70s.

A buildup of dead skin cells can make your complexion appear duller and drier.

Like your body’s overall metabolism, the skin’s metabolic processes also lag with age and exposure to environmental aggressors.

The skin’s metabolism controls the production and breakdown of collagen and elastin. It also affects how well your skin renews its cells, repairs its damage, and even how it responds to topical products you use.

Giving Nature a Helping Hand

You can speed up the process of skin renewal (at any age) with topical products that contains retinoids, which promote new cell growth, or alpha hydroxy acids, including glycolic acid. These loosen up the intercellular glue-like substance that holds skin cells together on the surface, allowing them to slough off sooner. You can find these ingredients in cleansers, serums, lotions, or creams.

An alternative is the judicious use of skin exfoliants. Harsh or excessive exfoliation can cause small tears, which allow water to escape and potential irritants to pass into your skin, making it feel dry and sensitive.

Heads up: the molecules in most cosmetic compounds are too large to be absorbed, so be suspicious of claims about absorption.

Even molecules in some anti-aging skin-care products are too large to pass through skin’s outermost layer.

When the skin’s barrier gets damaged (from UV exposure, harsh cleansers, over-exfoliating, etc.), microscopic tears form.

Sunscreen keeps skin’s surface safe from sunburns and its cells protected from UV damage. My dermatologist recommends a lotion with SPF 35 on the face, every day, year-round, and something stronger for extended exposure, for example when sailing.

The road to healthy, radiant skin is paved with blood vessels. Skin contains 11 miles of blood vessels. Each square inch contains 20 blood vessels.

Gilding the Lily

Nanaia Mahuta, former Foreign Minister of New Zealand

One’s skin is an expansive canvas. The average adult has 2,800 square inches—about 22 square feet—of skin, and people have painted on it for more than 6,000 years, when ancient Egyptians (both women and men) used makeup to enhance their appearance and display their wealth. Now the beauty industry is a key driver of the U.S. economy, generating approximately $94.36 billion in cosmetics and beauty sales in 2023. Enough said about that.

Over time and around the world, for the sake of appearances, skin has been tattooed, pierced, and scarred, kept pale or tanned vigorously. Standards of beauty vary greatly from culture to culture.

But beyond its ornamental value, skin is incredibly useful!

The Real Skinny on Skin

Next time you step on the scale, remember that skin is the heaviest of all your organs. The average adult body can have 20 pounds of skin alone, making up 10-15% of body weight. That 10-15% is composed of water, oils, fats, nutrients, hair follicles, blood and lymph vessels, collagen, and living and dead cells.

Cross-section of human skin

Within one square inch of skin, there are 19 million skin cells of various types, each with its own specific job.

That square inch includes about 60,000 melanocytes, cells that produce melanin pigment, which gives skin its color. All humans have melanocytes (with the exception of some people born with albinism).

The majority of skin cells are keratinocytes. These include basal and squamous cells, the two types from which the most common skin cancers can arise.

Skin Hard at Work

According to the Cleveland Clinic, a square inch of skin also contains 300 sweat glands—for better or worse!

Skin helps regulate body temperature by sweating, but also by dilating blood vessels. Blood vessels bring oxygen and nutrients to your cells, remove waste, and help regulate your skin’s temperature. When the skin gets warm, your blood vessels dilate, allowing heat to escape to the outside air. When it’s cold outside, they constrict, keeping the heat in your skin.

Skin is a sensory organ, each square inch containing 1,000 nerve endings, allowing us to feel touch, temperature, pain, pressure, and vibration.

Skin is also highly reactive to emotional stress. Research has shown that skin inflammations such as eczema, psoriasis, and acne often flare during stressful times.

Stressful situations can also trigger sweating, itching and hives.

Experts have found the connection between stress and skin is bidirectional: stress can exacerbate skin issues, but skin can also send signals to the brain, triggering a stress response.

Skin is the protective barrier against external threats, such as UV rays, bacteria, and infections.

Under the Surface

Skin has a microbiome, with trillions of microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses and fungi that help in fighting infection, controlling inflammation and helping your immune system recognize possible threats. Researchers are working on treatments to manipulate the bacteria on the skin’s surface to treat inflammatory skin conditions such as atopic dermatitis, acne, and diseases including skin cancer.

Researchers have discovered that skin has a circadian rhythm. During daylight hours, skin is in protective mode, trying to shield cells from UV light, free radicals, pollution, etc. Research shows that repair peaks at night. Both temperature and permeability increase at night, making skin more receptive to topical ingredients. Also at night, more water escapes from the skin. So, before bed, it’s prime time to apply moisturizer.

The thickest skin grows on the soles of the feet and palms of the hands, while the thinnest grows on the eyelids.

When exposed to sunlight, skin produces vitamin D, which is essential for bone health.

Your skin can flex. There are tiny muscles within the skin called the arrector pili muscles, located inside your hair follicles. It’s these muscles that make your body hairs stand straight up when you get goosebumps.

Medical Uses of Skin

My guess is that when people sign their organ donor cards, very few are thinking “skin.” Heart, liver, kidney, lungs…sure. In fact, skin is the largest organ in (on?) the human body. And skin donations are sorely needed.

Each year, approximately 58,000 tissue donors provide lifesaving and healing tissue for transplant. A single tissue donor can heal up to 75 lives. That’s why surgeons can perform approximately 2.5 million tissue transplants each year in the U.S.

Three-quarters of skin transplants are used in life-saving circumstances, such as severe burns. Doctors also use skin grafts in various surgeries, including open heart and post-mastectomy breast reconstruction. Experts estimate that another 500,000 patients would have shortened wound-healing time if enough skin were available.

Should you need a skin transplant, the preferred source would be you! Doctors usually take skin from the patient’s back, buttocks, and the backs of the thighs. These are highly effective, successful over 90% of the time. Skin donations from another person (living or dead) or from an animal, such as a pig or a fish, are stop-gap measures, to minimize infection and maximize fluid retention till you are able to repair yourself. “Foreign” skin is nearly always rejected long term.

Bottom Line: The title says it all. Skin is useful as well as ornamental

LET THERE BE LIGHT

Candlelight Vigil in Seoul, Korea

As the Winter Solstice approaches, many people are feeling a little low—or a lot.  Fortunately, there are several holidays and celebrations around this time of year to add a little light to your schedule. Here are just a few:

Diwali or Deepawali is a festival of lights celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains. It is celebrated in mid-October to late November, according to a lunar calendar.

Hanukkah is a Jewish festival of lights celebrated in November or December, according to the Gregorian calendar.

Kwanzaa is a celebration of culture and community celebrated in late December. An important part of the celebration involves lighting the kinara.

Lussevaka or Santa Lucia Day is a celebration of light, community, and the triumph of good over evil. It is primarily celebrated in Sweden, but St Lucia festivals are also held in Croatia, Italy, France, Germany, and Norway on December 13.

Yule is celebrated in many different ways by Pagans and Wiccans. It is the celebration of the Winter Solstice, the return of the sun. This is often symbolically represented by burning a Yule log, signifying the rebirth of the Oak King and waning of the Holly King.

Don’t Be SAD

Daylight Sky Light Therapy by MTS Medical Device

There is a term for those who suffer most when the days grow short: SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder).  SAD increases in higher latitudes where the winter days are short. Light therapy, where you arrange a special wide-spectrum light therapy box device at an angle to your face. Using such a device for several hours at the same time every day can be used to treat SAD. It can also help treat those who have depression all year round, improving their overall well-being.

Anger management therapy can sometimes be combined with light therapy.

Scientists have also discovered that light therapy can lower nighttime agitation in Alzheimer’s patients and reduce symptoms in Parkinson’s patients, including sleeping problems and tremors.

Whether sick or healthy, light definitely affects your mood. According to research, one in four people in Alaska suffers from depression – and it’s mainly caused by a lack of sunlight.

Sunshine Cures Everything

Superman may have had a bit too much sunlight.
“No One Can Save Us Now”
by Mojoko and Eric Foenander
Singapore Art Museum

Sunshine can also help with pain control. Research shows that patients whose beds are on a sunny side of a hospital experience less pain than those whose rooms are in the shade. As well as reduced pain, patients in sunny rooms tend to recover sooner, use fewer painkillers, and feel less stressed. One theory is that exposure to sunlight releases serotonin: a feel-good chemical in the brain.

High solar activity has been found to increase fertility rates. Furthermore, light can also give men a boost in the bedroom. Research has shown that higher testosterone is boosted by Vitamin D. The biggest source? The sun. A light box would have the same affect, but is possibly less romantic than a sunny picnic or stroll along the beach.

As far as I can tell, the health benefits of sunlight are all attributed to Vitamin D effects on/in the body.

Fake Light

Aside from the health benefits of light, many practical applications have lead to the creation of light when there is no sun—primarily the benefits of being able to see in the dark! 

Over the centuries, we’ve seen many advances in created light.

Campfires really create a sense of community!
(Thanks to H.R.Joe Photography)
  • Fires, the first source of created light
  • Torches
  • Oil lamps, precursors to candles
  • Candles (beginning around 500 BCE in Rome) 
  • Lanterns
  • Matchsticks
  • Flashlights
  • Fluorescent lights
  • Incandescent lights
  • LED’s 
  • Plasma Lightsabers
Traditional oil lamp for Diwali

Until the 20th century, candles were most common in Northern Europe. In Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, oil lamps predominated.

Besides providing light, candles were used for the purpose of measuring time, usually in hours. The Song Dynasty in China (960-1279) used candle clocks.

Kerzenhur- Candle Clock

A version of a candle clock is often used to mark the countdown of the days leading to Christmas. This is called an Advent candle.

Note: This term is also used for candles that decorate an Advent wreath.

Among the earliest forms of created light, candles have had the greatest staying power into modern times for numerous uses. An estimated 1 billion pounds of wax are used in the candles sold each year in the United States.

FYI: No candle wax has ever been shown to be toxic or harmful to humans.

Advent Wreath
  • Holiday decorations
    • Shaped candles for specific holidays
    • Candles for tree decorations
    • Menorah candles for Hannukah
    • Kinara candles for Kwanzaa
    • Nine candles in a lingonberry wreath for Santa Lucia Day
    • Advent wreath candles (marking the four Sundays leading up to Christmas)
    • Candles for windowsills (to guide the Holy Family in their flight to Egypt) 
Loy Krathongs – Thai Floating Lanterns
  • Lighting paper lanterns
  • Lighting and lifting sky lanterns
  • To produce a romantic mood
  • To make a dinner table more formal 
  • As backup for a power failure
  • To dispel unpleasant household odors
  • To test for drafts
  • Scented candles for pleasure and/or aroma therapy
Very Formal Dining Table

As the days grow shorter and night falls like a rock earlier and earlier, many people light candles around the house, even when they have electric lights, simply because the warm glow is cheerful. Which brings us back to human craving for light!

Cold Light

Gas lights were developed in the 1790s and were in common use in large cities by the middle of the nineteenth century. Streetlamps made the night safer (in wealthy areas) and gas piped into houses allowed (wealthy) homeowners to ignore the setting sun.

Too bright!

The invention of the electric-powered incandescent light bulb was even more effective in making the sun obsolete. Since electric lights have become nearly universal, ideas like a 24 hour workday and cutting sleep to work more have become nearly as universal.

Newborn incubators, refrigeration, pacemakers, surgical lighting, heated houses, underground ventilation, and electric harp string tuning meters are undoubtedly beneficial to human society. However, humans in general have become increasingly sleep-deprived and overworked since the spread of electricity. Heated and lighted houses have also made humans more likely to stay indoors all winter, avoiding direct sunlight. This leads right back to the beginning of this blog – Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Bottom line: Humans need light for a multitude of reasons, and in a multitude of forms.

Massive forest fires can’t stop Oregoners from playing golf. Maybe it’s not giving off enough light.