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In the quest to look fresh – what is skin quality?

Who doesn’t want to look fresh, with a skin texture that is smooth and radiant? If we look at the huge market of skincare products and aesthetic treatments of all kinds, many of us seem to be on an endless quest to look fresh and improve our appearance. Especially when it comes to improving skin quality, it can be difficult to know what treatments are available and what could work for you. You might not even have a clear idea of what skin quality really is, which makes things even more difficult. So let’s dive into the topic of skin quality and find out how you can improve it. 

Starting out: the 5 facets of natural beauty and attractiveness

If you would visit a qualified healthcare practitioner, he or she would not immediately start some sort of treatment to improve your skin texture. Your visit would start with a consultation, where your healthcare practitioner makes a thorough facial assessment, as well as asking you about your needs and desires. Aesthetic treatments should always be tailored to the individual, to yourself, so this is why the consultation is perhaps the most important part of your whole visit. Your healthcare practitioner has had lots of training and practice in how to perform a specific treatment. What makes the real difference is tailoring the treatment to you.

For a thorough facial assessment, experts have identified five facets of natural beauty and attractiveness.1 The five facets are a guide for healthcare practitioners to make a full-face approach so that nothing is forgotten. The five facets are:

  • Skin quality
  • Facial shape
  • Facial proportion and contour
  • Facial symmetry
  • Animation and emotional expression

But you just wanted to improve your skin texture, get smooth skin, and look fresh. Why go through all of these facets? Sometimes we can be a little too obsessed with a specific detail. A facial assessment will make sure a small detail will not stand in the way of the best possible treatment you can get. 

What is skin quality and how does skin texture come into the picture?

If we look into the skin, there are three major components that build it up: 

  • Hyaluronic acid, a water-loving molecule that preserves skin hydration
  • Elastin, an elastic protein that makes your skin elastic 
  • Collagen, a fibrous protein that forms a matrix in the skin that provides structure and support

In young and healthy skin, there is sufficient amounts of these components and they are also in good condition. With age, or due to external factors (stress, unhealthy diet, soaps, detergents etc.) the amounts of hyaluronic acid, elastin and collagen decrease. In addition, the quality of these components will be impaired. In other words, your skin quality has deteriorated. But what has this to do with skin texture?

Visible signs of a deterioration of skin quality

When your skin quality has deteriorated, visible signs can be an uneven skin surface with a skin texture that is rough and dry and not as smooth as you might want it to be. When your skin texture is rough and dry, it will not be able to reflect light so well, resulting in a loss of radiance. This could give the skin a dull skin tone that does not look fresh. Another visible sign of a deteriorated skin quality is loss of firmness.

How can your healthcare practitioner assess your skin quality?

There are many devices that can measure skin quality. For example, you can measure how much water the skin loses within a certain time interval. If too much water is lost through your skin, it cannot preserve moisture so well. You can also use a little probe that sucks up the skin. If the skin has low resistance to the suction, it has lost elasticity and firmness. There are also imaging systems that can analyze skin texture, such as surface roughness, pores and pigment spots. 

In other words, healthcare practitioners can use different devices to assess your skin. With their extensive knowledge and practice, most of the time this is not needed. They are trained in making thorough clinical evaluations and use well-established scales to rate different aspects of your skin, such as a standardized wrinkle assessment scale. 

What can be done to improve skin quality?

After the facial assessment, your healthcare practitioner will recommend a treatment that is most beneficial for you. When it comes to skin quality, a lot of treatments today focus on skin texture, where the skin surface is targeted in different ways, such as peels, to make the skin look fresh.  When topical treatments do not give you the desired result, you might consider other treatments. As you know by now, skin quality is dependent on the amount and condition of the three components hyaluronic acid, elastin and collagen. These components are found below the skin surface (which consists of dead, flattened skin cells) and to improve their function you might need to go deeper, below the skin surface. 

Improving skin quality below the skin surface

A treatment that targets deeper skin layers is Restylane® SKINBOOSTERS™. It is an injectable treatment that provides hyaluronic acid to larger areas of the skin. The hyaluronic acid is injected in microdroplets, which, after being injected, integrate into a layer of hydration that binds water molecules and thereby locks moisture within the skin.1,2 When Restylane® SKINBOOSTERS™ is injected, it has been shown to not only improve the content of hyaluronic acid in the skin, but also to restore the whole composition of the skin by boosting hydration and elasticity.2-4 

This way, Restylane® SKINBOOSTERS™ improves all three components that are so important for good skin quality. It is therefore a very efficient treatment to get visible improvements of skin texture and to make the skin look fresh. A better moisturized, elastic and firmer skin below the skin surface will result in a smooth and radiant skin texture5. 

It all starts with the facial assessment

Whether or not Restylane® SKINBOOSTERS™ is the right treatment for you is dependent on the result of your consultation. During your consultation, your healthcare practitioner will assess all five facets of your face and if an improved skin quality will be most beneficial for you, Restylane® SKINBOOSTERS™ is a proven treatment that will give you a visible and long-lasting effect.4 

Remember to always consult a qualified healthcare practitioner and to ask for a full-face facial assessment. 

References:

  1. Galderma Uppsala expert meeting, November 2016
  2. Gubanova EI et al. Poster presented at IMCAS 2015.
  3. Distante F et al. Dermatol Surg 2009;35(S1):389–93.
  4. Gubanova EI et al. J Drugs Dermatol 2015;14(3):288–98.
  5. Lee BM et al. Arch Plast Surg 2015;42(3):282–287.