Easy and Inexpensive Management
Dr. Scott Murray, MD, FRCPC, Dermatology, Assistant Professor Dermatology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS.
As you observe the geriatric patient, a variety of visual cues--posture, body habits, energy level and hair colour--can provide the observer with clues to the patient's age. However, in many ways it is the skin that is the first giveaway of the effects of aging. The skin is the most accessible organ for treatment and can be considered the parameter of aging most easily affected by intervention--at least cosmetically. As a result, there is huge interest in remedies to reverse age-associated skin changes. This has led to the development of an immense industry, both in medicine and in cosmetics, to defy these effects.
Skin Aging
Some changes to aging skin occur as a result of intrinsic effects such as genetics and racial types. There is little we can do to control these variables.1 For instance, the variable ability of skin to deal with sun exposure is predetermined to some extent in this way. Some visual changes of the skin also result from sagging of underlying muscles (sagging) and repetitive motion (grooves or "laugh lines"). These lines add to the lines on the skin that we visually identify with advancing years.
Extrinsic factors such as ultraviolet light, nutrition, underlying illness, smoking and stress can also contribute to skin aging.
