Our skin may actually cause ageing

 

The BBC reports:

The latest research suggests that our skin is not just a mirror for our lifestyles – reflecting the effects of years of smoking, drinking, sun and stress – and hinting at our inner health. No, in this new upside-down-world, the body's largest organ is an active participant in our physical wellbeing. This is a strange new reality where wrinkles, dry skin and sunspots cause ageing, instead of the other way around.

In 1958 ... [a] major project was quietly conceived. The Baltimore Longitudinal Study was to be a scientific investigation of ageing with a daring and rather unorthodox premise ... The research followed thousands of adult men (and later, women) for decades, to see how their health developed – and how this was affected by their genes and the environment.

Just two decades in, scientists had already made some intriguing breakthroughs, from the discovery that less emotionally stable men were more likely to be diagnosed with heart disease to the revelation that our problem-solving abilities decline only slightly with age.

But one of the most striking findings confirmed what people had long suspected: how youthful you look is an impressively accurate expression of your inner health. By 1982, those men who had been assessed as looking particularly old for their age at the beginning of the study, 20 years earlier, were more likely to be dead.  This is backed up by more recent research, which found that, of patients who were judged to look at least 10 years older than they should, 99% had health problems.

It turns out skin health can be used to predict a number of seemingly unconnected factors, from your bone density to your risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases or dying from cardiovascular disease. However, as the evidence has begun to add up, the story has taken a surprise twist.

. . .

As the largest organ in the body, the skin can have a profound impact. The chemicals released by diseased and dysfunctional skin soon enter the bloodstream, where they wash around, damaging other tissues. Amid the ensuing systemic inflammation, chemicals from the skin can reach and harm organs that seem entirely unrelated, including your heart and brain.

The result is accelerated ageing, and a higher risk of developing the majority of – or possibly even all – related disorders. So far, aged or diseased skin has been linked to the onset of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and cognitive impairment, as well as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

. . .

... there is direct evidence that [using sunscreen and moisturizing the skin] does reduce inflammation – and that it may help to prevent dementia ... adding moisture back is not particularly complicated, whatever cosmetics adverts seem to suggest. And in the field of ageing, this simple intervention is showing remarkable results.

There's more at the link.

I'm intrigued by this research because, like many others, I was exposed to particularly harsh conditions for my skin during my military service.  When you're deployed, nobody's going to provide sunscreen or moisturizer for your skin - at least, no military organization of which I've ever heard has done so.  You provide your own, or get sunburned and wizened like a dried-up prune.  (Yes, there are other similes.  No, I'm not going to mention them in a family-friendly blog like this!)

When I look at my catalog of health problems in later life (it's a depressing list), and read this article, I find that many of the illnesses and conditions it identifies are among my issues.  I wonder if there's a correlation between years of one's skin being baked and fried and rained on and frozen in the field, and health in later life?  It sounds as if there may be.  Might veterans be able to use this evidence to get more medical assistance for such issues as they get older?  How would one prove the connection?

Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice would say . . .

Peter