With the increase of age, people inevitably pay attention to the aging of the human body. The most obvious and intuitive manifestation is the aging of the skin, because the skin covers the surface of the human body, directly contacts the external environment, and migrates with the oral mucosa to form a complete skin barrier and jointly maintain the stability of the human body environment. Skin includes epidermis, dermis and subcutaneous tissue, the skin surface has ridge, the epidermis has melanocytes, the dermis has elastic fibers, and the subcutaneous tissue has fat and muscle, etc. With the increase of age, a variety of factors jointly promote the aging of the skin. And this requires an evaluation system to carry out systematic evaluation. On September 1, 2022, under the promotion of China Anti-Aging Association, China's first "Human Skin Aging Evaluation Criteria" was officially released.

There are more than 200 pages of human skin aging evaluation standards, which conduct in-depth research and analysis on skin aging. How should we evaluate skin aging in our daily life?

First, the first is light aging, the cumulative light exposure is the most important factor causing the slow aging of the skin, which also causes people to be dissatisfied with the appearance of change, mainly wrinkles, color spots, rough skin, capillary dilation, skin elasticity decline, skin color is grayish yellow. There are four types of photoaged skin: Type 1: wrinkle-free. Type 2: Exercise wrinkles. Type 3: Resting wrinkles. Type 4: full wrinkle type, that is, with the progress of light aging, wrinkles gradually expand until the whole or most of the skin is involved, the skin is rough and thickened. It often appears after the age of 60, the special population with more exposure to ultraviolet light can appear earlier, and even some patients may have one or more skin tumors. Because the skin of these people is already covered with wrinkles, it is defined as type 4: covered with wrinkles.

Second, pigment: Through the determination of the minimum amount of erythema, people react differently to the sun, which is also a better indicator to evaluate skin discoloration caused by skin damage.

Loss of subcutaneous fat: An important cause of skin aging is the loss or redistribution of subcutaneous fat.

Four, the change of muscles: the prominent change is that with the growth of age, the muscle gradually atrophy, eyebrows gradually droop, when people analyze their face, the most common problem is the droopy eyebrows, droopy forehead and the upper eyelid skin between the position of the relationship between the shift or asymmetry.

5. Loss of elasticity of skin collagen: With the gradual aging of the skin, under the action of gravity, the skin and its support structure gradually sag, losing the original elasticity or stretching ability.

Six, nail aging: 1 degree: mild aging: The appearance of skin aging around the nail (same as skin aging). The deck thickens, the longitudinal ridge, the transverse furrow increases, the nail black line can appear, the deck brittleness increases, the nail cracks appear. 2 degrees: moderate aging: The skin around the nail is further dry and wrinkled, chronic damage can be seen from long-term friction, and the growth rate of the deck is slower. Further thickening of the deck, hyperkeratosis subunguis, deck cracking, subunguis bleeding. The more obvious the longitudinal ridge and transverse furrow on the deck surface and the more transverse arc of the deck can produce inlay nails. 3 degrees: The skin around the nail is more dry, wrinkled, atrophied, and dull. Dermatitis minor onychia worsens, even disappears. It can be seen that long-term friction causes chronic damage. The deck grows slower. The deck thickening showed more serious symptoms, such as excessive subnail keratosis, deck brittle crack, subnail splinter bleeding, increasing longitudinal ridge and transverse furrow on deck surface, and increasing transverse camber of deck.

It should be noted that aging, also known as aging, is a necessary stage in the process of life activities, and is a physiological phenomenon, not a disease. With the progress of society and the continuous improvement of people's living standards, people's enthusiasm for life health and skin health is unprecedentedly high. Only effective evaluation of skin aging can better guide skin care and further delay skin aging.

Author:

Professor Yeung Sen

Department of Dermatology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University

(The opinions expressed here are those of the author.)