Most skin care advice treats acne and aging as opposites. Acne gets the harsh, drying treatments. Aging gets the rich, nutritious. But for many people over the age of 35, both problems occur at the same time, and treating them as separate problems often makes both worse.
The connection swells. simply, it is chronic low-level swelling in the skin. This type of swelling does not always look dramatic. It is not always redness or swelling that you can see. But it quietly disrupts your skin’s ability to repair itself, retain moisture, and keep out the bacteria that cause breakouts.
As estrogen levels change starting in your mid-30s, your skin produces fewer of the lipids it needs to keep its barrier strong. Your skin barrier is the outermost protective layer of your skin. Think of it as a brick wall, where the skin cells are the bricks and the lipids, including ceramides, cholesterol. And fatty acids are the mortar that holds everything together. When that mortar thins, the wall begins to crack.
These cracks allow moisture to escape and irritants to enter. Your skin reacts with swelling. And swelling does two things over time: it creates the conditions for breakouts and it breaks down collagen faster than it should.
