IN WINTER, the backs of your palms could grow to be dry, pink and cracked. Perhaps you end up slathering on moisturiser. When you don’t, the itching and ache can grow to be a significant distraction.

You may assume that’s so far as it goes: cracked pores and skin is annoying and uncomfortable, however not severe in the identical manner as, say, hypertension. However that assumption, like ageing pores and skin, may not maintain water.

Rising proof means that injury to the pores and skin can have knock-on results for the remainder of the physique, driving irritation, muscle and bone loss, and presumably even cognitive decline. The extra your pores and skin deteriorates, the extra the remainder of you ages prematurely. On this rising view, your pores and skin doesn’t simply mirror indicators of ageing – it’s a contributing issue. There may be even tentative proof that taking higher care of our pores and skin might gradual the dangerous results of ageing and enhance our general well being.

Our pores and skin is among the first elements of the physique to indicate indicators of ageing. It turns into wrinkly, particularly in energetic locations just like the corners of our eyes, and age spots can seem. Such adjustments could seem – fairly actually – skin-deep, however we shouldn’t underestimate the pores and skin’s significance to the remainder of the physique. “The pores and skin is the biggest organ within the physique,” says Wendy Bollag at Augusta College in Georgia, US.

And it isn’t nearly dimension. The pores and skin is essential for survival. The outer layer, the dermis, is impermeable to water, guaranteeing that we don’t lose our life-giving fluids to the air. If somebody damages giant swathes…