The more your skin deteriorates, the more the rest of you ages prematurely. Growing evidence suggests that taking better care of your skin could slow the harmful effects of ageing and improve your overall health. In this emerging research, your skin doesn't just reflect signs of ageing - it's a contributing factor.

The research evidence suggest that damage to the skin can have knock-on effects for the rest of the body, driving inflammation, muscle and bone loss, and possibly even cognitive decline, therefore we shouldn't underestimate the skin's importance to the rest of the body. We have previously written how inflammation contributes to the skin ageing, you can check out the article here. You can also check out our article on why we age and our tips for ageing well here.

In 2023 researchers looked at the skin and blood of 255 people aged 65 or older and found that people with less water in the stratum corneum had higher level of inflammatory molecules (cytokines) in their blood. Another research showed that disrupting the skin released inflammatory molecules and a subsequent treatment of the skin reduced the inflammatory molecules. The researchers conclude that tyhe inflammatory molecules we are seeing in the blood as people age are the exact same inflammatory molecules that you see when you insult the skin.

Emerging evicence also suggests inflammed skin can contribute to inflammatory bowel disease, skin damage also contributes to bone loss and the effects of skin damage even reaches into the brain with strong association now that the researchers have shown for Alzheimer's and dementia.

Another interesting research in 2019 on 33 older people showed that by applying face cream containing three types of fatty acids - cholesterol, free fatty acids and ceramides - twice a day for 30 days had skin that become better at retaining water and the levels of their inflammatory molecules fell.

Our ECM Advanced Repair Range has been specifically developed to reduce inflammation, repair and nourish skin barrier, as our motto goes: "The part is not well unless the whole is well."