Dermatologists say there are two main types of skin aging.
The first one is extrinsic ageing, which is caused by outside effects like smoking, wrong nutrition and harmful solar activity (also called photo aging). These factors lead to early precipitate skin ageing. The most risky areas are those, which are available for constant ultraviolet radiation exposure like face, chest, arms including rhytides, pigmented (lentigens and patchy hyperpigmentation) and depigmented injures (guttate hypomelanosis). Skin also may suffer from bleaching (discoloring), boosted skin delicacy, loss of skin plasticity and mild injures (keratoses and telangiectases).
Another type of skin aging is natural (or so called intrinsic) ageing. It is caused by mitochondrial damage, telomere shortening and endocrine dysfunction. Normally intrinsically aged skin identified as smooth and spotless, it has usual geometric elements with emphasized expression lines.
Photo aging of the skin
The sun influence leads to the premature aging of the skin, which happens earlier than natural aging. Photo-aging causes wrinkles; it slows down the process of wound healing and also activates the process of some blemishes appearance (including actinic and seborrheic keratoses, skin cancer, cutaneous horns, pigmentary alterations such as lentigens and hyperpigmentation, and the most remarkable problem is elastosis). So to sum up, these skin problems, as well as premature aging, are caused by the damaging influence of the ultraviolet rays.
Photo aging and exfoliation techniques
The action of superficial chemical peel presents the process of exfoliation of the stratum corneum, or even the whole epidermis, in order to provide skin renewal and diminish the photo damage. It is also should be remembered, that the results of cursory chemical peels aren’t very remarkable or prolonged on such dermal lesions as wrinkles or furrows. Superficial chemical peels are usually done with 10-20% trichloracetic acid, 40-70% glycolic acid, Jessner’s solution, salicylic acid, and tretinoin.
The superficial skin peel in known for its advantages such as easy way of using, remarkable results, less side effects and anesthesia being unnecessary.
The chemical peeling of medium depth is characterized as exfoliation of epidermis to the papillary dermis with the help of chemical gents. Chemical agents used: 70% glycolic acid, Jessner’s solution, and solid carbon dioxide combined with 35% trichloracetic acid.
The medium depth chemical peel is commonly used to treat weak to moderate photoaging including: epidermal growths, pigmentary changes, rhytides, lentigines, actinic keratosis.
In order to treat skin areas with temperate to moderate photoaging changes, chemical peel can be used in combination with other exfoliation methods, i.e. dermabrasion and laser resurfacing.
Another way of solving the problem is deep chemical peeling, which requires the use of Baker-Gordon phenol peel or trichloracetic acid above 50%.
You can also go through surgical procedure known as laser resurfacing (or laser peel) which also can reach the injured skin layers.
However, you should be warned about the side effects. The problem is that deep peels may cause the damage of your skin including hypopigmentation and textural changes, an alabaster or statuesque skin appearance. So the risks should be taken to attention
