Skin 101
You might have your routine down to a fine art, but do you know about the basics of skin? Understanding the overall function and how it works is key when it comes to achieving optimal skin health. From getting to grips with your skin barrier to understanding the main layers and, crucially, the importance of feeding your skin from within, below our experts reveal everything you need to know about your body’s largest organ.
What is the Skin?
As your body’s largest organ, the skin’s main role is to protect the inside of the body from environmental and external stressors. Think things like pollution, bacteria and germs. As well as being a protective barrier, the skin also helps you maintain the right internal temperature.[1].
What are the layers of the skin?
The skin consists of three main layers: the epidermis, the dermis, and the hypodermis as well as the subcutaneous fatty tissue. The outermost layer, the epidermis (as well as other layers of the skin) protects the internal organs, muscles, blood vessels and nerves against trauma. Then there’s the dermis, which is made mostly of collagen, which gives the skin its flexibility and strength. Providing support, structure, and texture to the skin for a youthful-looking, radiant complexion. Below these layers, lies the hypodermis which helps insulate the body from heat and cold, providing protective padding and serves as an energy storage area [2].
What is the skin barrier and its function?
You’ve probably heard the word ‘skin barrier’ a lot lately, or stratum corneum, its scientific name. As the top layer of your skin, it plays a crucial role for your skin’s overall health and has a number of different roles.
Think of it like a ‘brick wall’. Its main purpose is to provide a barrier between the external environment and the organism by protecting us from external threats such as toxic chemicals, free radicals (pollution, UV exposure) and allergens [2].
Your skin barrier is essential as it’s, quite literally, keeping you alive, ensuring all the bad stuff stays out and the good stuff stays in. Additionally, it helps lock moisture in, reducing excess water loss in the body. If your skin doesn’t have enough moisture, it will show up on your complexion appearing dry and cracked with loss of elasticity. Strengthening and supporting your skin barrier is key for hydrated, happy skin.
What is 100% skincare?
It’s important to know that the skin is a two-sided organ, meaning topical skincare can only reach so far. By only treating the outside of the skin with topical serums and moisturisers, you are doing 50% of the work. The other half comes from feeding the skin from the inside – for example, with nutritional supplements from the Advance Nutrition Programme™. By doing this, you nourish it from head to toe and achieve ‘100% skincare’.
How to feed your skin from the inside out
Fun fact: the human body makes 200 million skin cells an hour. We make skin cells from nutrients and vitamins in our food. In fact, the food that you consumed yesterday has already entered your bloodstream and will be in the outer layer of the skin (stratum corneum) in a week’s time.
That’s why our science-led ingredients feed your future skin from within. We turn traditional skincare inside out with our innovative, award-winning range of evidence-based skincare supplements. Our supplements provide 100% coverage by targeting:
- 100% skin components (epidermis, dermis, hypodermis, blood vessels and sebum), where many topical creams fail to reach.
- 100% skin cells over the whole body from head to toe whereas topical creams only work where they’re applied.
Our skin researchers have developed five fundamentals of skin health to help you achieve 100% skincare.
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Sources:
- How does skin work? National Library of Medicine. April 11th 2019.
- What to know about your skin barrier and how to protect it. August 2022.