Can we talk? About skin? I mean, really talk about skin? Specifically–the skin on my arms. When did the skin on my arms become such a spotty, wrinkly, chicken-foot scaley mess?
And why? Did I not spend the past decades from age 18 to today slathering myself head to toe with body lotions? Did my skin not realize there was a purpose to my pampering it? That I expected it to return the favor by not shriveling up on me at quite such an early age? Ha!
http://fromyourdoctor.com
I think what’s happened is my melanocytes have gone crazy and my dermis has disintegrated.
Actually, what’s happened is the collagen in my skin has disappeared. One source I read says we lose about 1% of our skin collagen every year starting at age twenty. That’s called intrinsic aging, according to Suzan Obagi, assistant professor in dermatology at the University of Pittsburgh and director of the Cosmetic Surgery and Skin Health Center, who explains that when “collagen (which provides skin firmness), elastin (which supplies skin elasticity and rebound) and glycosaminoglycans or GAGs (which keep the skin hydrated)” start diminishing it leads to thinner, more fragile skin. Then there’s extrinsic aging which results from environmental damage, and which accounts for the age spots, the freckles, the lesions, and the skin cancers!
Thank you so very much.
I now have three different preparations which I apply religiously after I dry off: (Malin+Goetz Vitamin b6 body moisturizer, c.Booth Egyptian Argan Oil Body Butter, and Rite-Aid’s Renewal Dry-Touch Body Oil) . 
Do they help? Well, at the least they make me feel as if I’m taking some action. Does my skin look better? Than what? I suspect it looks better than someone who doesn’t slather themselves daily, but do my arms look as they did before they fell to the forces of intrinsic and extrinsic aging? Probably not.
Which leaves me with these thoughts: what’s the problem with wrinkly, crepe-y arms? Why when I lift my arm and see the skin shimmy down do I so quickly put my arm down? It’s me and it’s my arm and don’t I have to own the dismay with which I view it? Yes, but I don’t think the dismay has as much to do with the idea that anything other than young, firm skin is ugly as it does with mortality. I’m not pining for my formerly taut skin and I don’t reject my aging body. I think I’m just shocked that it’s actually happened to me.
My generation thought we’d be young forever. Really. And now that we’re finding out the truth–well, that takes some getting used to. Seeing my skin look exactly like my mother’s did when she was no longer young brings me face to face with the fact that just as she died, so one day will I. Not only will I not be young forever, I won’t live forever. Wow. Far out…..
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