While canoeing through the Ardèche gorges in southern France, I attracted some strange looks. It’s a sunny July afternoon and the sky is a perfect cobalt blue. The power of the bright sun is more visible to me than ever before. Its light turns the surface of the water into a mirror of light, so bright that it is dizzying. I didn’t want to risk it: I chose my clothes with the seriousness of an explorer going to the Sahara.
My arms, hands, and torso were fully covered by a long-sleeved t-shirt to protect me from the sun, and on my head I wore a bucket hat with a cloth covering my face. The icing on the cake included a few layers of high-intensity sunscreen, which turned some of my bare skin a pale, shimmering shade of titanium white, and sunglasses.
My vanity knows no bounds and I am determined to avoid further sun aging. But do these extreme measures have other hidden benefits?
In fact, is it possible that my obsession with the health of my skin is an accidental act of genius? The answer to both questions is yes. Recent research shows that our skin is more than just a reflection of our lifestyle, it also shows the effects of years of smoking, drinking, sunbathing and life stress. It turns out that our body’s largest organ is an active participant in our physical health.
It’s the strange new reality that wrinkles, dry skin, and spots cause aging, not the other way around.
A strange revelation
In 1958, the United States passed laws on landing on the moon and created NASA, the same year another big project was quietly in the works.
The Baltimore Longitudinal Study aims to conduct a scientific study of aging with a bold and unusual premise. In the past, it was common scientific practice to obtain information about living human physiology from donated cadavers. But this time the subjects were tested earlier, while their hearts were still beating. The study followed thousands of adult men (and later women) for decades to understand how their health developed and how their genes and environment affected it.
Just two decades later, researchers have made some interesting discoveries, from the conclusion that men who are emotionally unstable are more likely to be diagnosed with coronary heart disease, to the fact that our ability to deal with problems declines slightly with age. But one of the most surprising findings confirmed what people had long suspected: how youthful you look is an impressively accurate indicator of your internal health.
In 1982, men who looked older than they actually were at the start of the study were more likely to die 20 years later. This is supported by recent research, which found that 99 percent of patients who looked at least 10 years older had health problems.
It turns out that skin health can be used to predict many seemingly unrelated factors, from bone density to the risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases to the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. But as the evidence piles up, the story takes unexpected turns. Is the skin just a living record of our accumulated damage, or is it something more complex? It actually keeps healthy people healthy, but does it make sick people worse?
Other kinds of birthdays
There are two main ways to determine a person’s age. The first is a standard age called the chronological age (the age that follows the revolution of the sun).
But there is also biological age, which tells you how fast your body is aging (the maturity of your organs and cells). Both vary from person to person and can vary greatly even within the same body.
As we age, it is well known that our actual age eventually catches up with our appearance: the skin becomes thinner, darker, loses elasticity as the cells responsible for producing pigment and collagen die or become “senile”, meaning they stop update and continue to exist in a dormant state. But the environment does the most damage. Although ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation can damage DNA and cause burns, mutations, and skin cancer, 95% of the total UV rays that reach the earth’s surface are ultraviolet A (UVA). This part of the sun has a longer wavelength and can penetrate deep into the dermis, breaking down collagen and stimulating cells to produce melanin.
At a microscopic level, photoaged skin (skin that ages due to exposure to sunlight) is thicker and has deformed tangles of elastin and collagen fibers. It should be noted that it is often unevenly pigmented and has multiple wrinkles.
This applies whether you have very fair skin (which cannot tan) or very dark skin. Even hyperpigmented skin can burn, and it can be severe.