Skin Elasticity Biomarker

 
Your skin is the largest organ in your body which has multiple functions. Besides its own vital roles, the skin can also be used as a loose marker for other non-directly related systems in the body.

Two of the most prevalent proteins in your skin are collagen and elastin; collagen provides structural strength and integrity and is supported by elastin, which as the name implies provides the skin with its elastic properties. To give you an idea of how these two proteins work in combination, think about a willow tree in a strong wind; the willow tree has a remarkably resilient structure, not because it is completely rigid, but because it bends and gives enough to buffer the force of the wind. Your skin is similarly designed, it has just enough rigidity to act as a physical barrier, but also the elasticity to be physically deformed (to a certain extent) without breaking.

These two proteins are very important in other areas of your body too, such as the arteries that act as part of the transport infrastructure for your blood. Your heart creates pressure to generate the force needed to pump your blood around the body. To withstand this pressure the blood vessels that supply the body with blood need to be strong enough to resist this force, which is where collagen comes into play. Just as important though is the need to be flexible, which is the main role of elastin, so that you don’t spring a leak every-time the pressure raises sufficiently high. Elastin also has a neat trick of being involved in harnessing elastic strain energy which is part of a genius solution called pressure wave propagation that Nature has hit on to minimise the energy cost of being able to circulate your blood.

With poor lifestyle and average ageing these proteins are not incorporated optimally in the arterial vessel structure and therefore the system gradually becomes more and more dysfunctional. This will have wide ranging consequences throughout the entire body and can be manifest in many ways such as hypertension, heart disease, stroke or arterial aneurysm, amongst others.

A really quick and simple test that acts an adjunct to other markers is the skin elasticity test. The test takes less than a minute, follow this link to the test instructions and result calculator http://www.hpc-uk.net/5.html