Skin Structure

The skin is your body’s largest organ. It serves as a barrier to protect you from the outside environment and helps control homeostasis by regulating body temperature and excreting small amounts of waste. The skin is a very metabolically active tissue and synthesizes various chemicals including vitamin D. The skin is composed of 2 layers, the epidermis and the dermis. The epidermis is the outer layer and though it has 5 distinct layers, it is much thinner than the dermis or inner layer. The dermis is where the blood vessels and nerves travel. These dermal blood vessels supply nutrients to all layers of the skin.

The epidermis serves as your body’s defense. It helps prevent dehydration, mechanical injury and even protects against many harmful chemicals. The epidermis is where melanin can be found; it serves to absorb light energy and prevent ultraviolet rays from damaging the dermis and cells below the epidermis.

The dermis lies deep to the epidermis and gives skin its structure. It contains fibrous connective tissue made up of collagen, elastic fibers, and muscle fibers. The dermis is also the home of the blood vessels, nerve fibers, hair follicles, and sweat and sebaceous glands. The blood vessels deliver nutrients to both the dermis and epidermis. The nerve fibers provide sensory and motor function. This critical layer provides the structure and infrastructure to the skin.

Below the dermis is the subcutaneous fat layer that consists of loose connective tissue and fat cells. The fat cells store energy and help regulate heat. The subcutaneous layer is also rich in blood vessels that supply the structures above and below it.

Your skin also has its own police force—the white blood cells that make up the immune system. These white blood cells initially travel in the blood stream. Some leave the blood stream to enter the dermis to serve a patrol function throughout the layers of your skin. They crawl around surreptitiously, acting quickly to stop and kill bacteria and other invaders that have penetrated the epidermis and threaten to do you harm.

Free Radicals/ Antioxidants

What are Free Radicals?
Free radicals are invisible molecules that are electrically charged and highly unstable. These invisible villains attack your body silently and destroy tissue, cells, and even your DNA. Free radicals attack your entire body as they are ubiquitous. Free radicals are produced in the environment from sunlight, air and water pollution, and the production of many chemicals, vapors and toxins. Free radicals have been scientifically proven to be a major factor in the development of heart disease, numerous cancers including skin cancers, and a variety of age-related degenerative diseases. Your skin is especially vulnerable to free radical attack as it is your body’s largest organ and is bombarded everyday by these invisible destructive dynamos. Your skin is exposed to -UV light, air and water pollution, pesticides, chemicals, vapors, and toxins from the environment. Your body is also attacked by free radicals made within your body. Just “living” generates free radicals during stress, exercise, and even simply by breathing.
The importance of free radicals is understanding that they destroy cellular structures and damage the DNA necessary for new cells. They also damage your skin’s connective tissue layer, causing damage to the collagen and elastic fibers. The result is damage to the skin infrastructure, loss of elasticity and wrinkles.
This can be seen graphically by damage from sunlight. The sun produces ultraviolet light which creates free radicals. These free radicals damage the skin’s cellular DNA and lead to mutations and ultimately skin cancer. The same ultraviolet light damages the collagen and elastic fibers, resulting in saggy, wrinkled skin. Wrinkles are mostly due to sun damage (free radical damage).
What are Antioxidants?
Antioxidants are free radical scavengers that hunt down and immobilize or kill free radicals, thereby preventing damage. The antioxidants neutralize free radicals and render them harmless. Your body actually makes some antioxidants, but never enough to combat the ubiquitous nature of free radicals. Most antioxidants that neutralize free radicals get spent in the process, meaning they are no longer free to protect against further free radical attack. This is another reason why we never seem to have enough antioxidants. Antioxidant protection comes in 2 forms, by mouth and topically. Dr. Levine’s Ultimate Antioxidant Formula™ (www.physicians-select.com) provides the best protection as it contains over 30 of the most potent antioxidants. It was designed to mimic the antioxidants you find in nature (food). Dr. Levine’s Ultimate Antioxidant Formula™ provides more than skin protection, as it contains ingredients that have been shown in scientific studies to help prevent a variety of degenerative diseases including some forms of cancer. Dr. Levine’s Ultimate Antioxidant Formula™ also contains ingredients that can help strengthen your immune system and help detoxify toxins. Taking antioxidants by mouth helps protect your body, including your skin, from free radical attack. Providing your skin with antioxidant protection topically offers far more protection and actually can rejuvenate, protect, and restore your skin’s youthful appearance.
The benefits of taking antioxidants by mouth are the reason the National Cancer Institute recommends 5-9 servings of fruits and vegetables per day. The National Cancer Institute recognizes the critical role that antioxidants play in maintaining good health and preventing a variety of cancers and other diseases.

Why Skin Ages And Why Dr. Levine’s Skin Creams Works

There are two ways your skin ages. The first is chronological aging…simply you are getting older. Chronological skin aging is an inevitable process that occurs from physiologic alterations in skin function. As you age skin cells do not follow the proper maturation and differentiating process that results in functional stratum corneum—the surface most layer of the skin. When the skin cells are not properly formed, the integrity of the skin is lost. Additionally, young healthy skin forms neutral lipids that help the skin act as a protective barrier. As you age fewer lipids are made, causing the skin to become pale, dry and wrinkled. Both of these changes in the stratum corneum result in a loss of elasticity, keratin fibers, and hydration. The skin becomes pale, dry, wrinkled and loses its suppleness and elasticity. Dr. Levine’s Ultimate Anti-Aging Day Cream™ and Dr. Levine’s Youth Restore Cream™ are filled with ingredients that deeply moisturize both the epidermis (including the stratum corneum) and dermis. The combination of various vitamins, botanicals, minerals, and natural extracts bathe the skin in rich nutrients that help optimize skin structure and function. Dr. Levine’s rich and varied lipids help restore the barrier function to the skin so your skin will stay hydrated and have improved elasticity and suppleness.

The second and most aggressive way to age your skin is through ultraviolet radiation (UV) exposure. This is called photoaging and is a function of the amount of pigment you have in your skin, and the amount of cumulative sun exposure you get. Many people are under the mistaken impression that only a sunburn will age your skin. The truth is that just getting sun exposure (no burn necessary) will age your skin. The sun emits UVA, UVB, and UVC. Fortunately, UVC is very short wavelength radiation that is filtered by the atmosphere. UVB is the medium wavelength radiation that causes sunburns. UVA is long wavelength radiation that does not burn the skin, but does cause cumulative damage. UVA and UVB age the skin by several mechanisms. At the molecular level, UV radiation destroys skin cells and fibroblasts (large star-shaped cells that make up connective tissue and produce fibers of protein used in the intracellular matrix of connective tissues). The UV radiation also damages DNA, resulting in mutations that can lead to skin cancer. The UV radiation enters the skin and sets off a series of enzymatic and molecular cascades that shut down collagen synthesis and initiate breakdown of pre-existing collagen in the extracellular matrix. At the connective tissue level, the UV radiation induces matrix metalloproteinases that alter the matrix of connective tissue. UV radiation also induces angiogenesis-the formation of new blood vessels. This brings in inflammatory white cells that produce elastase, an enzyme that damages the elastic fibers, in the layers of the skin. All of these changes serve to damage the epidermis (outer layer of skin) and the dermis-the deeper layer that contains connective tissue, smooth muscle, blood vessels and nerves. In summary, the sun damages cells, connective tissue, elastic fibers and DNA and leads to skin that is pale, dry, wrinkled (both fine lines and deep furrows), and inflamed. Dr. Levine’s Ultimate Anti-Aging Day Cream™ and Dr. Levine’s Youth Restore Cream™ are filled with antioxidants that help prevent UV damage and protect the skin and the structural and cellular elements. The antioxidants, vitamins, botanicals, minerals and natural extracts protect the skin cells and fibroblasts, helping to prevent damage and mutation. . Dr. Levine’s powerful ingredients help stop the destruction of collagen, and elastic fibers, maintaining youthful skin structure. Dr. Levine’s ingredients also help prevent angiogenesis and the resulting inflammation and damage. By protecting the skin’s architecture and cellular components, the natural protective immune function of the skin is enhanced. When elastic fibers and connective tissues are protected, you get improved skin elasticity and suppleness. Your skin is supported, the integrity of the dermis and epidermis is maintained and you restore your youthful appearance. Dr. Levine’s Ultimate Skin Care ingredients and his proprietary peptide technology help repair damaged skin and help prevent further damage. The various deep moisturizers and lipids keep the skin hydrated and soft and restore the skin’s barrier function,leaving the skin smooth, radiant, and supple.

In short, Dr. Levine’s Ultimate Anti-Aging Day Cream™ and Dr. Levine’s Ultimate Youth Restore Cream™ provide a unique combination of effective ingredients that protect, repair, nourish, and strengthen the skin. You will notice improved skin appearance- your skin will be soft, smooth, supple, refreshed, radiant, firm, toned and more youthful .

The Dr. Levine Answer to Youthful Appearance

You can prevent signs of further aging and you can restore your youthful appearance. The plan is simple: protect the skin from damage, and repair the skin that is already damaged. Thankfully, the majority of skin aging is due to photodamage from UV radiation- a form of free radical damage that can be totally prevented. To prevent photodamage, simply protect your skin from the harmful rays of the sun. To repair skin that is already damaged, you need to bathe the skin in nutrients that support and repair the skin’s cells and structure. This is the basis of Dr. Levine’s Ultimate Skin Care™.

Dr. Levine’s Ultimate Skin Care™
Please educate yourself on how you can improve the health of your skin and look younger! Click below.
Dr. Levine’s Ultimate Anti-Aging Day Cream™
Dr. Levine’s Ultimate Youth Restore Night Cream™
Dr. Levine’s Ultimate SunBlock™

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Copyright © 2002-2005. Physicians Select® All Rights Reserved

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This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.