Over time, as stem cells decrease, our skin becomes thinner, which decreases its protection.
How the Face Ages
As we age, number of stem cells are reduced. Dozens of changes take place as the years add up, some of them obvious and familiar:[1]
- Foreheads expand as hairlines retreat
- Ears often get a bit longer because the cartilage in them grows
- Tips of noses may droop because connective tissue supporting nasal cartilage weakens.
There are also:
- Skin wrinkles
- Because two components of our skin — collagen and elastin — degenerate
- By your mid-20s, the collagen in your body starts to diminish, and by the time you reach your 80s, you have around 4 times less collagen
- Those deep ones in the forehead and between the eyebrows are called expression lines (or animation lines)
- They're the result of facial muscles continually tugging on, and eventually creasing, the skin.
- Other folds may get deeper because of the way fat decreases and moves around.
- Finer wrinkles are due to sun damage, smoking, and natural degeneration of elements of the skin that keep it thick and supple.
- Itchy skin (or alloknesis)
- Past studies have shown that Merkel cells in the skin are reduced in elderly people and people with dry skin conditions[2]
- Bruise easily with age[3]
- As we get older, several factors can contribute to easy bruising, including:
- Aging capillaries
- Thinning skin
- Structural rearrangements
- When we're young, fat in the face is evenly distributed, with some pockets here and there that plump up the forehead, temples, cheeks, and areas around the eyes and mouth.
- With age, that fat loses volume, clumps up, and shifts downward, so features that were formerly round may sink, and skin that was smooth and tight gets loose and sags.
- Meanwhile other parts of the face gain fat, particularly the lower half, so we tend to get baggy around the chin and jowly in the neck.
Video 1. How Does The Skin Age and Why Do We Get Wrinkles (YouTube link)
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