Subcutaneous fat: how to take care of it
If you ever feel the temptation of instant “lifting” and “plumping”, resist! I will explain why.
It is true that wrinkles and skin pigmentation problems are the typical mark of aging, but so is the change in shape of your face, including the “under eye” shadows that bother so many women. And yet, nobody talks about that change o shape, except maybe to try to sell you products for skin sculpting. This is pretty silly, because “skin sculpting” is not possible. It is an advertising formula that has no meaning in real life. Our faces are not made of butter or clay, they cannot be sculpted. Buy why is this even a figure of speech? It represents wishful thinking related to real changes in the shape of our faces.
When we’re young, fat in the face is evenly distributed, with some pockets here and there that plump up the forehead, temples, cheeks, and areas around the eyes and mouth. As we age, that fat loses volume, clumps up, and shifts downward, so features that were formerly round may sink, and skin that was smooth and tight gets loose and sags. At the same time, other parts of the face gain fat, particularly the lower half, so we tend to get baggy around the chin and “jowly in the neck”.
The reaction of some people, urged by false advertising, is to go for unproven or failed treatments to change the shape of the face, like microneedling. If you fall for that false advertising and believe the promise of perfect plumping in the right places, you will be paying good money to be experimental Guinea pigs. Even worse, they are paying for an experiment already known to be counterproductive. The plumping that follows microneedling results from inflammation, not, as they tell you, from more tissue being build. It is worse than that: inflammation damages your skin and underlying tissues in such a way that it decreases the plumping you are trying to achieve!
What is the mechanism? We know what the mechanism is for photo-aging (aging caused by the sun) and it is likely that the same happens when the skin is stressed in other ways.
Inflammation factors, like IL-11,IL-1a,IL-6,and TNF-alpha are induced by solar radiation in cultured cells and may be involved in facial subcutaneous fat loss in vivo. UV and reactive oxygen species result in inflammation, and inflammation leads to subcutaneous fat loss. Those are factors that are hard to avoid, because we live on earth. But other sources of inflammation are self-inflicted. “Treatments” like microneedling or microdermabrasion, will decrease the subcutaneous fat that gives your face its natural shape.
What to do? The first is to prevent what can be prevented, by avoiding the sun and using sunscreen. The second, use effective antioxidant topical products. Third, avoid self-inflicted stress on your skin. Fourth, resist the pressure to put ugly names to these natural changes, you are just playing into the hands of advertisers.
At present, there is no way to build fat in the areas of your face where you want it. Sculpting of your face is a fantasy. However, you can preserve your skin structure and subcutaneous fat and this is what I recommend that you do. Pay attention to what Skin Actives does, including any product designed to preserve your own stem cells. I will keep you informed.