Age spots, a harmless but often disturbing phenomenon of aging of the skin

The one already at 40, the other with only 60 and some people remain completely spared. We are talking about age spots, benign pigmented skin disorders that show up with age, especially on the face, decollete and hands.

Over the years, not only the body but also the skin ages changed. In addition to wrinkles age spots, solar medically as lentigo or lentigo senile denotes a typical phenomenon of aging of the skin. Here, most of which only a few millimeters in size, brownish-looking stains show especially on the skin that have been exposed very often the sun over the years. So then, UV radiation is the main cause for the development of age spots. Normally, the melanin production is excited by UV radiation. The skin pigment melanin then ensures even browning of the skin. With age, however, it may cause a local increase of melanin-producing cells. In addition, the increased costs arising from UV radiation free radicals damage the skin cells. As a consequence, metabolic end products such as the brown pigment lipofuscin age, which is formed by the oxidation of fatty acids in the cell membrane, and local accumulations of melanin no longer be completely dismantled and age spots result.

Effective fight with age spots.

Although age spots represent benign lesions, they are often bothersome especially women, because unfortunately show the unsightly stains only to the areas that can not be covered by clothing. Here, the only make-over with so-called camouflage makeup. However, if you want to permanently take action against age spots, the need to resort to other means. Special creams for age spots have proven in tests to be ineffective. Other possibilities are:

• Bleaching creams and whitening creams – applied over several weeks – can fade the spots.
• Abrasive cleaners or chemical peels with which the top layers of skin and thus the age spots are peeled. Disadvantage is that the entire skin surface is strongly attacked and a spotty complexion can occur.
• Laser therapy allows a targeted destruction of pigment accumulations using ultrashort light pulses. Through various wavelengths different skin depths also can be achieved without pulling the surrounding tissue affected.
• Basically, age spots should thereby be removed only by an experienced physician and agreed beforehand exactly.

Prevention is the best remedy for age spots.

To save you the cost and sometimes pain of age spot removal, it is better to prevent in time. Notably, the right sunscreen is meant by a correspondingly high sun protection factor. In addition, every effort should be avoided, which promotes the excessive formation of free radicals. These include social drugs such as alcohol and nicotine. In addition, the body’s protective system of the skin can be supported with vitamins C and E as well as zinc and selenium.