According to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and the San Francisco Veterans Administ­ration Health Care System (SFVA), moisturized skin might prevent age-related ailments including Alzheimer’s, heart disease and diabetes.

The cosmetic and personal care industry hears it all the time: the skin is the body’s largest organ; and we focus on its holistic status to treat signs of aging, or address compromised conditions. But what we do not often consider is how its negative health could affect our overall health—being the largest organ. A new pilot study from dermatol­ogists at UCSF and the SFVA brings this perspective to light.

Inflammation, Aging and the Skin

According to the researches, as humans age, low levels of inflammation—or inflammaging—occur, driven by an increase in molecules in the blood known as cytokines. Such age-related inflammation has been linked to chronic diseases including Alzheimer’s, cardiova­scular disease and diabetes. And while scientists suspected the inflammation stemmed from the immune system or liver, this group of dermatol­ogists have a different theory.

“The inflammation must come from an organ big enough that very minor inflammation can affect the whole body,” explained study senior author Mao-Qiang Man, M.D, a research scientist in the UCSF, based at the SFVA Health Care System, who is also a visiting professor at Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China. “Skin is a good candidate for this because of its size.”

While ordinarily, cytokines help to repair defects in the barrier; but in aging skin, the barrier is not so easily repaired, and inflammatory signals continue to be released, eventually reaching the blood.

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