Menopause and your skin

Your skin is the largest organ in your body. What I didn't know is apparently if you took all your skin off and weighed it, it would weigh 15 kilos! That's an awful lot of skin, isn't it?

What's the role of your skin?

Obviously, it fights infection, it keeps what's outside out and keeps what's inside in, plus your amazing skin changes UV light into vitamin D, and obviously offers protection for your internal organs.

Now, every single cell in your skin is affected by oestrogen and at some point, from around the age of early forties, your oestrogen levels go down. So, every single cell in your skin will have some kind of effect from a lack of estrogen. We know that your bones start to notice the effect, your heart starts to notice the effect, and so do your skin cells on the outside of your body. Well, obviously they are affected too, in fact, 40% of women say that they have had a problem with itchy and dry skin.

Why does this happen?

1. Estrogen affects your sebaceous secretions. You've heard of sebum, the oily, waxy substance produced by your body’s sebaceous glands. It coats, moisturizes, and protects your skin, it depletes this.
2. Estrogen also helps you produce hyaluronic acid, which is in the dermis along with your sebaceous glands, rather than the top layer of skin. The second layer of skin and your hyaluronic acid production is also affected by estrogen.
3. Collagen is also produced when estrogen is there. So, if your estrogen goes down, basically your skin's natural ability to keep itself plump and moisturised and unwrinkled starts to go down too.

Apparently, men and women age facially identically till a woman gets to perimenopause, and then suddenly she has 30% less collagen and a woman's facial ageing increases dramatically. Now, what is also known is that not only does your collagen start to go down and everything goes a little bit saggy.

I've talked umpteen times about bone loss and osteoporosis, and we all think about bones in your wrists and bones in your ankles, and what happens if you fall over, but apparently you get bone loss in your jaw, too. And that's why, as we get older, we've got a smaller amount of bone in our jaw and women start to look a bit saggy and jowly.

What you can do to help your skin

So, I'm sure you've seen adverts for creams with ceramide and extra collagen and… I don't know…... sebaceous producing extra exciting creams! Well, the dermatologist that I researching through says that basically 90% of that stuff that we can just buy from the supermarket or Amazon or wherever just sit on your skin and it makes it feel amazing. It might make it smell amazing, and temporarily it might make it look amazing. But unless it's got the right type of chemicals in that skin, it is not absorbed into your skin.

But… there are products, he says, that are absorbed into your skin and will have a beneficial effect even if it is a short turn.

Hmmm, a lot of the stuff that we buy just sits on the outside of your skin. That’s quite interesting because I do get quite taken in by those Nivea adverts with floating molecules and things going to make me look 30 years younger - tomorrow.

So, what is it that you can do? Therefore, given that we've got this natural reduction of estrogen, well obviously you could put the collagen back - it's up to you and your medical advisor as to whether or not you want to take HRT. I made no secret of the fact that I am on HRT - I have just moved from the patches to the gels because the patches got so enormous and they were crunchy. But HRT has definitely helped me.

Another interesting thing I heard is - stop using anything that foams. An analogy that I heard is; you're doing you're washing up, you've got your Fairy Liquid, you want the nice bubbles that get rid of all the fat, or you get in the shower and want the nice foam to shampoo your hair. You want it to be squeaky clean. Yeah, because basically, it's squeaky clean when you've taken all the oil out of the pan or from your scalp or out of your hair. And when you're scrubbing your skin, we want to get it nice and clean – but that foam is actually removing any sebum that we've got left! And then we actually end up in a vicious cycle of more itching.

So, try not to use anything that is foaming – anywhere but your hands, hands are fine with foaming!

What you should use on your skin

Your skin's natural PH should be 4.5 to 5.5. A lot of soaps market themselves as being ‘skin friendly’ may have a PH of up to 10.5. That means it's going to completely change the PH of your skin!

The dermatologist says that you can take the lotion that you would normally put on your skin to moisturise with, and actually clean your face with it, yes – the lotion. He says it will take off the day’s muck and grime without stripping your skin. You can then use that same lotion as a light moisturiser during the day, and something slightly heavier at night. And I also found out that apparently, the skin on your legs is the least able to produce lots of moisture so often when you get into bed at night you should put lovely thick moisturiser on. Personally, I love Aveno cream and it works really well.

Alternatively, the dermatologist mentioned Cetaphil. They do a gentle cleanser that removes excess oil and grime without drying the skin. They also do a facial moisturising lotion and a daily moisturiser which is factor 50 or above. I believed we should only use factor 30 moisturiser on our faces because I think I was told that it blocks your paws. But a lot of the people I've listened to recently in doing this research have said no - go for factor 50 on your face.

To recap… no foaming products, light moisturiser during the day, heavy moisturiser at night. And if HRT is something that you want to use, start using it now.

Sam X