Sorry you had to wait long for my reply.
Preventative dermarolling is a very good idea.
All those areas that you mentioned are likely to already have a certain degree of sun damage even though it doesn’t show that much.
Sun damage (and damage caused by our own metabolism) is the main cause of skin aging. You can see it very well when you compare sun-exposed areas such as the face to skin that was usually hidden from the sun.
The skin consists of two main layers. The epidermis and the dermis.
The turnover of cells in
the epidermis is fast. The epidermal cells are constantly being produced at the bottom of epidermis, then they travel up and are eventually sloughed off from the skin surface. It takes about 20 days for the cells to get from the bottom of the epidermis to the skin surface where they are sloughed off. This continuous process slows down as we age but it is sill extremely quick comparing to the turnover of the dermis.
The cells in the dermis have an extremely slow turnover. The half-life turnover of dermal collagen is about 15 years! What does this mean:
You are born with millions of collagen cells in the dermis.
When you are 15 years old, 50% of the original collagen cells are still there (the other 50% were replaced).
When you are 30 y. old, 25% of the original collagen is still in your skin.
When you are 45 y. old, 12.5% of the original collagen is still in your skin.
When you are 60 y. old, 6.25% of the original collagen is still in your skin.
And again, the newly formed collagen has a half-life turnover of about 15 years.
When you are for example 60 years old, some of the original collagen you had as a newborn is still in your skin. This collagen has been subjected to sun damage and other damage for 60 years. It is no wonder we get wrinkles and sundamaged skin!
When collagen is damaged, the body immediately repairs it but unfortunately as we age, the repair is not perfect and moreover, collagen levels diminishes.
Elastin has even longer half-life turnover. It is about 70 years.
The extremely slow turnover of the cells in the dermis is on of the reasons why a tattoo in the deep dermis (>1 mm) lasts a lifetime. Tattoos slightly lighten in years but the pigment stays for dozens of years. Permanent make-up is not inserted so deep so it lasts long but not as long as a tattoo.
The advantage of a dermaroller is that you can trick the body to trigger collagen and elastin much sooner than is their natural turnover. Dermarolling with needles that reach the dermis causes tiny microinjuries in the dermis and the body has to fix these. These microinjuries will trigger new collagen (nevertheless the skin will never be perfect as when you were young).
Ablative methods, such as acid peels or ablative lasers can hardly go the depth of the dermis due to the risk of scarring and hypopigmentation. A dermaroller very easily can go that deep, because it doesn’t ablate the skin, it only pricks it. Since the pricks are surrounded by untreated skin, the regeneration happens very quickly. It takes long to achieve results because every time you roll, you only prick small fractions of the skin. Repeated dermarolling and patience is necessary.
Preventative or corrective dermarolling will speed up the turnover of dermal cells and this can slow down (not stop) the signs of skin aging. Maybe not all signs but at least some.Use vit. C preventatively as well. As an antioxidant, it partially prevents oxidation damage of skin cells. Both topical and oral intake is useful.
The best anti-aging prevention for the skin is to use a sunscreen on your face 365 days a year. UVA light is intensive also in winter and it goes deep
into the skin.
It is however very important to get some sun on other parts of your body every now and then:
https://http://forums.owndoc.com/dermarolling-microneedling/Sun-protection-with-dermarolling
Topic: preventive dermarolling (Read 11207 times)
