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The Skin May Hold the Answers to What Ails the Body
Researchers are trying to find out if moisturizing your skin could have systemic health benefits
To prevent chronic disease, eat well, sleep seven to nine hours a night, exercise… and perhaps you should also moisturize your skin. Yes, moisturize. According to ongoing research at the University of California, San Francisco, certain moisturizers could be unexpected allies in the prevention of chronic disease after middle age.
To understand the mechanism of this potential protective effect, we have to look at the relatively recent concept of “inflammaging” (a combination of inflammation and aging). As people get older, they experience an increase in the levels of certain molecules, called pro-inflammatory cytokines, which amplify inflammation in the body. This is thought to be one of the reasons behind a chronic inflammatory process in the elderly, which was first referred to as “inflammaging” in a 2000 article by immunology professor Claudio Franceschi and his team at the University of Bologna in Italy. (When that process starts may vary from person to person depending on genetic traits. But several studies that measured inflammation in people over 60 have found an ever-increasing inflammatory status.)
In a perfect world, inflammation is part of the body’s immune response and plays an important role in fighting invaders such as viruses and bacteria and repairing damaged tissue. But some researchers believe persistent low-level inflammation in the elderly seems to be the common denominator of many age-related conditions such as Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, and degenerative arthritis.
But what does all of this have to do with moisturizers? “What we have found, much to everyone’s surprise, was that those inflammatory cytokines are coming from the skin,” says UCSF dermatology professor Dr. Peter Elias.
Research led by Elias found that in the process of aging, the skin barrier — which normally protects the body from excessive water loss — becomes more permeable and slowly loses its ability to keep the skin hydrated. As a response to this barrier defect and the resulting dehydration, the skin sends out signals (inflammatory cytokines) to try to repair that…
