What is a sensible Skin? How to fight ?
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WHAT IS THE SKIN?
The skin is the body’s biggest organ, the one that faces more physical and psychological disorders. It performs multiple functions such as body temperature regulation, sense of touch, body moisture maintenance and being the first barrier of the immune system. It is also a reflection of our psycho-emotional mood.
WHAT IS A SENSIBLE SKIN?
To maintain all the skin functions perfectly active, it is necessary to renew it continuously, since the skin cells lose their ability to regenerate over the pass of time, thus causing skin aging.
The skin sometimes is characterized by its sensitiveness, a sensitive skin is more reactive to the environment or internal disorders, causing irritations, allergies and other skin issues as atopic dermatitis.
Sensitiveness may appear in any type of skin: it can be oily, dry, normal or mixed. It can also appear on both young and mature skin.
CHARACTERISTICS OF SENSITIVE SKINS
- Possessing a thin stratum corneum, which gives a brittle and rough skin appearance.
- Poor barrier action performance.
- Redness, due to increased blood flow, happening in any inflammatory reaction.
- Itching, stinging and burning due the skin’s flaking process.
- Loss of the hydrolipidic film of the skin, resulting in dry and dehydrated skin, unable to maintain the osmotic balance.
TYPES OF SENSITIVE SKINS
Natural sensitive skin: a thin skin and white skin, sometimes a little dry, it flakes on the surface and it flushes easily. For example, the skin of a baby is thinner and its barrier function is more limited than the skin of adults.
Reactive sensitive skin: the cold, the sun, the wind, and inadequate hygiene care habits damage your skin. A peeling, a laser intervention, may cause the skin to react actively.
Occasionally sensitive skin: a skin disorder, such as seborrheic dermatitis, acne, rosacea, as well as many other situations unleash the sensitivity of your skin. For example, hormonal imbalance, this can be a result of stress, pregnancy, the menstrual cycle, puberty or menopause.
WHAT IS HYPERSENSITIVITY?
La Hypersensitive skin is defined as a type of skin that is hyper-reactive to different factors of a different nature that are generally well tolerated by normal skin. It is a more extreme and common version of sensitive skin.
It is characterized by uncomfortable sensations and visible reactions when contacting with generally harmless agents, such as extreme temperature, chemicals, or UV rays.
The symptoms of the hypersensitive skin are: weakening of the barrier function of the skin, high reactivity of the epidermis’ sensory fibers, and redness caused by inflammation.They can be caused by external factors and / or internal factors.
IN WHICH PARTS OF THE BODY APPEARS?
If symptoms are not properly treated, any area of the body skin may become chapped, cracked anywhere in the body.
Even large skin areas such as arms, legs, cleavage, hands, shoulders, elbows, calves, scalp, knees and also intimate areas may be affected as they are vulnerable areas.
This sensitiveness can be caused by atopic dermatitis.
INTERNAL FACTORS
- Allergies: Redness, tightness, itching, burning, pustules, etc
- Sweating: Sudoración and Microinflammation.
- Skin tightening.
- Hormonal changes: acne (puberty) and Melasma (hormones in pregnancy).
- Free radicals.
- Genetics.
EXTERNAL FACTORS
- Synthetic tight fabrics: damaged and irritated skin.
- Chemicals: they modify the natural neutralizing ability of the skin, damage the cellular structure and deteriorate the barrier function of the outermost layer of the epidermis.
- Prolonged contact with water: loss of natural skin moisturizing factors (known as NMF) from the surface lipids. The skin dries out and becomes rough, more sensitive.
- Temperature and humidity.
- Medical treatments: Chemotherapy, radiotherapy, dialysis diuretics, laxatives, lipid-lowering drugs, etc.
- Air pollution.
- UV radiation: a healthy skin contains antioxidants that protect it from free radicals.
WHEN DOES IT APPEAR?
The phenomenon of sensitive skin appears increasingly in population, increasing year after year. It is apparently linked to the way of life in the industrialized countries due to the lower environmental quality and the increase in the use of irritating products due to the excess hygiene habits. Although the origin is multifactorial, it is also linked to genetic and immunological factors and skin barrier function disorders.
WHAT IS THE ATOPIC DERMATITIS?
Atopic dermatitis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease with a hereditary and allergic-type tendency characterized by redness and dryness of the skin that causes itching and scratching and manifests itself in the form of outbreaks leading to the appearance of very delicate skin.
OTHER SKIN PROCESSES
Dehydrated skins
Dehydrated skin is a skin that lacks water. Dehydration is usually temporary and can affect all skin types: oily and mixed skin, dry and very dry skin, sensitive skin or not. It is important not to confuse dry skin and dehydrated skin. In fact, in the first case, the skin presents a continuous lack of lipids and requires an additional input of fatty substances. In the second case, the skin lacks water and needs ingredients that capture water but not lipids.
Water is an essential element for all skins.The upper layer of the epidermis naturally contains between 12% and 16% of water. When this percentage is lower than 10%, it can be said that the skin is dehydrated.
Solar allergies
Sun allergy or photosensitivity refers to various symptoms, illnesses and disorders caused or aggravated by sunlight exposure.
The most common places where this type of allergy happens include:
- The “V” of the neck
- Back of the hands
- External face of arms and legs.
In rare cases the reaction may be more severe and may produce urticaria or small blisters that may even spread to the skin in the covered areas.
The reason of this body reaction is unknown. The immune system recognizes as strange some components of skin altered by the sun and the body activates its immune defenses against them. This produces an allergic reaction that takes the form of a rash, small blisters or, rarely, some other type of reaction on the skin. People of all races and ages can develop these allergies.
HOW TO FIGHT SENSITIVITY?
A cosmetic product for sensitive skin should treat skin’s reactivity and avoid irritation, through a formula that excludes irritating ingredients such as alcohol, anionic surfactants, comedogenic substances and photosensitizers.
The first thing to avoid is dryness, with rich pure nutritious ingredients and lipid components of the stratum corneum, restoring the barrier function of the skin.
The second step is to formulate with soothing agents with anti-inflammatory properties that will treat skin’s reactivity.
Including vasoprotectant agents with anti-edema and circulation stimulation properties is a must to treat redness of sensitive skin.
A healthy skin is a reflection of good homeostasis, we must help to maintain the ability of our body to ensure its correct functions.
