Hannah English

Understanding your skin’s function as a barrier is the key to supporting and looking after it. It acts as a barrier from UV, germs, water and other environmental challenges.

Skin on the face is different to the skin on the body. It’s thinner (specifically in the dermis), and there are more sweat and oil glands. Your face, neck, scalp and chest have between 400 and 900 oil glands per square centimetre, while other parts of the body have 100 or less oil glands per square centimetre

We also have different types of sweat glands and different types of sweat. Eccrine sweat is secreted all over the body and is mostly water and electrolytes. This type of sweat cools us down.
After puberty, we start to make apocrine sweat, which is secreted from the underarm and groin areas. This is emotional sweat and it contains lipids, steroids and proteins. This is the kind of sweat that mostly contributes to body odour.

desquamation (or when you exfoliate).

The sun produces a lot of energy and UV isn’t the only kind. About 50% of radiation from the sun is infrared, 40% is visible light and 10% is UV radiation. Infrared is largely felt as heat, visible light is what helps us see, and UV radiation can be further broken down into UVA, UVB and UVC

UVA also penetrates past the epidermis and into the dermis, where it affects dermal fibroblasts – the cells responsible for making collagen and elastin.

A lack of evidence doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t work, only that it hasn’t been proven.

The skin on your body is 2–3 times thicker than the face and it turns over more slowly, so you can afford to be more aggressive with it.

Put unwanted facial products to good use on your body. The skin on your body is 2–3 times thicker than the face and turns over more slowly so you can afford to be more aggressive with it (unless it’s eczema-prone).

Glycation occurs when free sugars (e.g. glucose or fructose) attach to proteins (e.g. collagen and elastin) or lipids. This process can’t be reversed and over time the collagen becomes less flexible. It’s not about what you eat – sugars are part of our metabolism and their accumulation in proteins is a fact of life.