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Skin health can be used to predict a number of seemingly unconnected factors
- michael1999 3y agoI wonder how much of the value of moisturizing is from massaging the tissue and working waste into the lymphatic or circulatory systems for disposal.
- meristohm 3y agoI've been wondering this, too, and remembering back to childhood when my mom advised always moving from extremities inward towards the heart (sunscreen, toweling off, etc).
- _Microft 3y agoIsn't that because moving away from the heart would force blood back against venous valves, possibly doing damage to them?
- AnEro 3y agoFor aestetics little to none, for overal health and bloating probably better than with think but not as much as we'd like
- femto 3y agoYou could test this by comparing people who wet shave daily with those who don't. Lathering on the skin during wet shaving delivers an incidental massage.
- Etheryte 3y agoThere's questionable reporting in some parts of the article which makes me doubt how seriously I should take the rest of it. Case in point with the concept of moisturizer adding moisture. While the name implies that that's what it does, it actually prevents moisture your body provides from escaping, it doesn't add any moisture that isn't already there. While the end result may seem similar, it isn't, for example you can't keep adding moisturizer to get more and more moisture, you're capped by what your body provides.
- DontchaKnowit 3y agoNot true. There are different classes of moisturizers, some are water based and do actually add moisture. Then there are oilier ones that only keep moisture in. I knkw this, because my skin is so dry and missing any protective layer that I have to apply both in sequence.
- spondylosaurus 3y agoYep, humectants vs occlusives! This is why, for example, you should never apply pure hyaluronic acid on dry skin/hair: it's a humectant, which means it works by sealing in existing moisture. You have to apply it to damp skin/hair to get the intended benefit.
- meristohm 3y agoIn late 2020 I committed to only taking cold showers. I note several upsides after nearly three years of this: - easier to forego caffeine, as cold water in the morning leaves me wide awake - easier to use less water, in part because it's so easy to get out of the shower into a warmer environment - mental health benefits, including increased confidence dealing with things I don't want to do but which are my adult duties- cold showers have helped me grow up - my skin is healthier; I'm no longer soaping and heating away my natural oils (I only use soap if I'm actually dirty, though of course I still soap my hands throughout the day for food prep, etc), and maybe the constriction helps with lymph flow? Dunno about that, but my skin feels good these days, except my arms and hands, which get a lot of sun (and so I've been using sunscreen more often, moisturizing with olive & coconut oils, wearing long sleeves, staying in the shade, and spending more outside time in the morning and evening). Massage is great, too, from oneself and/or another person; take some time moisturizing and applying different levels of pressure- an aunt said lymphatic massage is a light touch, not felt in the muscles. I don't take all her advice, mind, but it does feel good to be kind to my skin. Edit to add: oh and pat down to dry off, rather than rubbing with a towel, so as not to remove oil. On the other hand, is it helpful to speed exfoliation? Maybe only if there's flaking dry skin, which needs more intensive care anyway? My understanding is that our skin sloughs off naturally and generally doesn't need extra help, depending on the individual.
- networkchad 3y ago[dead]
- galleywest200 3y ago- easier to use less water, in part because it's so easy to get out of the shower into a warmer environment In the peak of summer temperatures (especially this year), this is not exactly true.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoI assume the vast majority of HN readers live in climate controlled residences where the temperature inside the residence and bathroom is more than the temperature of cold water, even in peak summer.
- robert2020 3y agoI always assumed moisturizer was mostly a cosmetic benefit, maybe feels a little better or prevents cracking in super dry weather.
- 11235813213455 3y agoWhat protects skin is more food and outdoor activity, for example tomatoes against sun burns, other vegetable as raw and ripe as possible, etc.. Cosmetic products are just business
- 11235813213455 3y agoOh, cosmetics products lobby has downvoted me
- Fricken 3y agoI like to try and guess people's ages. In real life, or on video, where their personalities influence my guess, I'm much worse than when looking at a still image. With a still image often the quality of a person's skin is the only giveaway, and when that is the case I'm remarkably accurate most of the time. So I'm skeptical there's much one can do, and people's skin seems to age at roughly the same rate.
- symbolicAGI 3y agoEasiest way to guess a person's age is by the relative size of the ears, that never stop growing. Tiny ears - teenager. Huge ears - senior. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18653105/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18653105/
- ilaksh 3y agoI wonder if this is a common target for cosmetic surgery? "Shaving" off bits of the ears to make them smaller?
- whycome 3y agoOr maybe more doable: preventative measures like "ear retainers" for nighttime?
- cstejerean 3y agoThe linked study doesn't seem to support that "ears never stop growing" at least in the typical way one would read that sentence. > This study supports the view that as people age, their ears get larger, particularly the ear circumference, which increases on average 0.51 mm per year. This enlargement is likely associated with aging changes of collagen So they do get larger with age but not due to growing, but rather the typical aging of the skin + gravity tends to result in the ears enlarging in diameter.
- smolder 3y agoDo your ears hang low? Do they wobble to and fro? Can you tie them in a knot? Can you tie them in a bow? Can you throw them over your shoulder like a continental soldier? Do your ears hang low?
- slothtrop 3y agoSome heavy lifting for the claim that skin impacts health comes from this: > it's thought that intrinsic factors are responsible for the tiniest fraction of the classic "aged" look, while UV light is responsible for over 80% of visible skin changes. Here's the result from the study this links to: "By calculating statistical correlations between the four clinical clusters (wrinkles/texture, ptosis, vascular disorders, and pigmentation disorders), and real age and apparent age on the one hand and heliodermal status on the other hand, we identified a link between each clinical cluster and aging and the photoaging process. By comparing evaluations of clinical signs between the two groups for each 10-year cluster, we demonstrated that whatever the age, a prevalence of pigmentation disorders for the sun-seeking group (ie, pigmentation) is strongly linked to ultraviolet exposure. Meanwhile, clinical signs of ptosis are linked more to chronological aging and do not present differences between the two groups, nor, therefore, photoaging. Wrinkles and texture are affected by the two aging processes. Finally, clinical signs of vascular disorders present no evolution with age." I guess since UV impacts pigmentation and partially wrinkles, they add that up to 80%, but I see no hard number given for % impact on wrinkles/texture. One problem I can immediately see is that people are judged to be older primarily based on wrinkling, not pigmentation. Though it may be uncommon to notice age spots absent of significant wrinkling. I don't see a convincing case that unprotected skin is correlated with mortality risk moreso than poor health is correlated with aged skin.
- glitchc 3y agoSmooth, soft and clear skin is definitely correlated with youth. It conjures the image of babies in most people's minds. Deviations from that indicate a degree of aging depending on the type and extent.
- neonate 3y agohttps://archive.ph/a1383 https://archive.ph/a1383 http://web.archive.org/web/20230824150704/https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230823-the-curious-ways-your-skin-shapes-your-health http://web.archive.org/web/20230824150704/https://www.bbc.co...
- manmal 3y agoI’ve been applying DIY 20% ascorbic acid solution on my face for a few weeks, and am seeing some benefits already. Photoaging and spots seem to revert a bit, and there is definitely some lightening (as expected [1]). According to some Reddit posts, it takes a few months until the improved collagen synthesis becomes noticeable. Vitamin C serums are quite expensive because ascorbic acid oxidizes quickly, and other forms have to be used instead. But if you mix ascorbic acid with distilled water yourself, every few days, you get a very cheap and probably more potent alternative. I put it in a sprayer bottle, keep it in the fridge, and spray my face in the morning. I haven’t found studies on the ideal concentration so far, but consensus on Reddit is that anything between 10 and 20% is ideal for collagen synthesis. 20% is too harsh for some. 1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7802860/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7802860/
- landemva 3y agoInteresting, though why would a person want to do this skin depigmentation? Is it like people dying their hair color?
- nicup12345689 3y agoLookup lipofuscin, many spots are made of it. Goes beyond aesthetics
- whycome 3y agoI think the presumption here is that they are white and reducing the look of dark spots and not someone with darker skin lightening it overall. A challenge with skin-related literature (and internet comments) is that there's always the unspoken assumption that you're talking about a white person unless stated otherwise. Even the article reads oddly of you start off thinking of them as a dark skinned person.
- manmal 3y agoAging skin usually accumulates pigmentation abnormalities, like hyper- and hypopigmentation. Ascorbic acid might be able to help both. That’s not exclusive to Caucasian skin types btw. In my case, I‘m just taking it as a sign that it’s working, as pigmentation is only one of the areas AA affects.
- gumby 3y agoThe photo at the top is most likely a smoker. Increased CO in your bloodstream, and the effect of nicotine, seems to kill capillary circulation in the skin (and likely elsewhere, including the brain, kidneys). One reason folks in their 40s-60s today look so much younger than people the same age from the 80s and before is likely from the reduced prevalence of smoking. And the article mentions diabetes...which also damages the microvascularization though not to the same extent.
- refurb 3y agoAnd the article mentions diabetes...which also damages the microvascularization though not to the same extent. That claim isn’t backed by empirical evidence. It’s very common for diabetics to have chronic skin ulcers and amputations, but smokers do not.
- gumby 3y agoI guess I wasn't clear: 1 - Paper mentioned smoking and diabetes (the latter surprised me, though I hadn't thought of your example which is a good one). 2 - smoking increases CO to bloodstream, and nicotine. The latter stiffens the vascular system; the CO doesn't just damage it but is believed to damage the small muscles of the skin, leading to the pervasive and fine grained wrinkling. 3 - Acute diabetes also damages the microvasculature (stiffining and blocking) which leads to various problems like PAD; that diminished circulation makes the immune system less efficacious, so for example people get difficult to heal lesions and such that can lead to amputation. My point in that regard was "huh, I can imagine that you could see signs of diabetes for similar reasons", though TBH by the time an ulcer shows up you probably have noticed other signs. But perhaps there are earlier traces for the non observant. I wasn't claiming that diabetics and smokers would have the same external symptoms. I'm a diabetic nonsmoker myself, and largely wrinkle-free :-)
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago> and the effect of nicotine I would be surprised if nicotine alone had such deleterious effects. After all, nicotine has been used in energy drinks in Japan for years and viewed as innocuous as caffeine.
- anotheraccount9 3y agoIt's actually the same for many other organs.
- gumby 3y agoFolk history judges people by the quality of their skin (to the dismay of adolescents in particular). You see it in hollywood and in literature: the hero has clear skin while the villain is surprisingly often described as being disfigured. This could stem from a long practice of disease avoidance before modern medicine, even when no disease is relevant (a birthmark, recovered from smallpox, etc). Years ago I worked in dermatology (pharma side) and I started out thinking that apart from skin cancers it was just about vanity. Wow, I could not have been more wrong! The point I started this comment with was pointed out to me. And because of that phenomenon, people with skin issues often do restrict their social activities because of it. In some extreme cases (say, fungal infections that you can't even catch from other people) they even become shut ins. Terrible.
- pessimizer 3y agohttps://www.skinema.com/ https://www.skinema.com/ > "Beauty equals good" is an age-old trope in entertainment, points out Doris Bazzini, a professor of social psychology at Appalachian State University. In a 1999 study she co-authored, a panel watched 20 of the top-grossing movies in each decade from 1940 to 1989, rating characters by attractiveness and other traits. They found that the stereotype held true across all decades and genres. She discovered the same thing in a 2010 study on human characters in 21 Disney animated movies. > "Attractive characters displayed higher intelligence, lower aggressiveness and greater moral virtue," the study said. Even animal characters show similar patterns, Bazzini points out: The villain in "The Lion King" is literally named Scar and has one across his eye. "Evil as plain as the scar on his face," says one song in "The Lion King II." https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/why-does-hollywood-keep-equating-beauty-with-virtue/2017/05/18/8a9c1f72-397a-11e7-a058-ddbb23c75d82_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/why-does-hollyw...
- nicup12345689 3y agoYou can find reference to this in Chaucer. It's very very old = Homo sapiens
- masfuerte 3y agoIt's always tempting to impute / unlikely virtues to the cute
- xyzzy4747 3y agoWhat about this? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26992108/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26992108/ >Results: Women with active sun exposure habits were mainly at a lower risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and noncancer/non-CVD death as compared to those who avoided sun exposure. As a result of their increased survival, the relative contribution of cancer death increased in these women. Nonsmokers who avoided sun exposure had a life expectancy similar to smokers in the highest sun exposure group, indicating that avoidance of sun exposure is a risk factor for death of a similar magnitude as smoking. Compared to the highest sun exposure group, life expectancy of avoiders of sun exposure was reduced by 0.6-2.1 years.
- htss2013 3y agoIt's amazing that people take hopelessly confounded studies like this and infer anything from them. Yes the study says they tried to remove confounders. But if people could effectively remove confounders, there'd be no need for randomized trials (which are enormously expensive). Despite doing everything possible, scientists' best efforts to remove confounders still don't effectively substitute for actual randomization. This study is from 1990-1992. Even with all the sophisticated software today, we still cannot remove confounders, so how bad was it in 1992?
- aeternum 3y agoYes think the replication crisis makes it pretty clear that even with all the fancy software, we still can't remove confounders today (and probably never will). You can pretty safely translate we removed confounders to: we slightly cooked the data and got this significant result.
- anonuser123456 3y agoThanks for posting this. I’ve heard of this study but have never read it. Having read it, what a dumpster fire of un-controlled healthy-user bias.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- linsomniac 3y agoMy wife said one of the most valuable things she learned in nursing school is: I keep a picture of a healthy patient in my head, and when I look at a new patient I zero in on how they look different from a healthy patient. I've often thought about that and used similar mechanisms in my tech work.
- hereforthecake2 3y ago> I've often thought about that and used similar mechanisms in my tech work. This made me laugh because I can't for the life of me figure out what this means. Can you elaborate? Sounds interesting.
- Izkata 3y agoHave an idea of what should happen, compare it to what actually happens. Even if it's not the thing you're actively working on, something being out of place tends to stick out as wrong and will help you notice problems earlier. An example from pairing with someone at work recently: "Wait a minute, that ran way too fast, there's no way it actually succeeded" - indeed, it had failed in a way the system couldn't detect. I kinda thought everyone does this at at least a basic level. How else would you realize your code has the wrong output?
- yMEyUyNE1 3y agoSomething similar to "begin with the end in mind".
- phkahler 3y agoDo people at higher latitude have better skin and live longer?
- ranprieur 3y agoThis is an anti-sun puff piece. It doesn't even mention vitamin D.