Our skin is a living and breathing organ. We need to look after it, nourish it and use good soap on it - preferably Bare Naked Soap :)
The average person’s skin covers an area of 1.73 square meters.
Skin accounts for approximately 15% of your body weight.
Your skin contains more than 17 kilometres of blood vessels.
The average person has approximately 300 million skin cells. A single square inch of skin has about 19 million cells and up to 300 sweat glands.
Your skin is its thickest on your feet (1.4mm) and thinnest on your eyelids (0.2mm).
Your skin regenerates itself. It sheds dead skin cells on a daily basis, about 30,000 to 40,000 cells every minute (that's 4kg per year!) creating a new layer of skin every 28 days. Even while you sleep your skin exfoliates itself, without your help. Dead skin cells remain on the skin, so it's important to remove them with an additional exfoliating soap.
Some sources estimate that more than half of the dust in your home is actually dead skin cells. Dust is an accumulation of many materials, including dirt, animal dander, sand, insect waste, and dead skin cells. Each time you vacuum, you’re picking up dead skin cells off the floor, the chair, and the walls.
Dead skin from all of us humans comprises about a billion tonnes of dust in the earth’s atmosphere. Polluting critters aren't we?
Millions of bacteria live on your skin. The skin's surface is home to surprisingly diverse communities of bacteria, collectively known as the skin microbiota. The harmless bacteria that thrive on the skin can help immune cells fight disease-causing microbes.
Skin that is severely damaged will heal itself by forming scar tissue, which is different from normal skin tissue because it lacks hair and sweat glands.
Skin can form additional thickness and toughness, calluses, if exposed to repeated friction or pressure. Hands and feet are the main areas for these to be found.
Some of the nerves in your skin are connected to muscles instead of the brain, sending signals (through the spinal cord) to react more quickly to heat or pain.
Skin gets its color from a pigment called melanin. Skin color can range from very pale to very dark, depending on how much melanin the body makes. Everyone has the same amount of cells that produce melanin, which is made in the outer layer of the skin called the epidermis, but not everyone produces the same amount. The more melanin your body produces, the darker your skin. The genetic mechanism behind human skin color is mainly regulated by the enzyme tyrosinase, which creates the color of the skin, eyes, and hair.
There are four main receptors in the skin that respond to pressure: Meissner’s corpuscles, Merkel’s discs, Ruffini endings, and Pacinian corpuscles. Each receptor responds to a different type of touch. “Meissner responds to light touch, Merkel to pressure and texture, Ruffini to stretching, and Pacinian to vibration and deep pressure.
Skin plays an important role in regulating body temperature. Your skin acts as your body’s thermostat. When temperatures rise, sweat glands activate to cool the body down. Sweating is a normal and natural bodily function that helps regulate your body temperature. Normal sweating can be as much as a 1 litre of fluid per day. When temperatures are lower, blood vessels in the skin tighten and limit the amount of hot blood that can reach the skin, preventing heat loss. Pores also become smaller when exposed to colder temperatures in order to retain heat.
Changes in your skin can sometimes signal changes in your overall health. Rashes, hives, and itching may signal an allergic reaction, a bacterial skin infection, a viral infection, or an autoimmune disease. A mole may be a sign of skin cancer
Our skin is a pretty clever organ, be kind to it and nuture it - we only have the one skin to keep ourselves from falling apart - literally.
