What is the Skin Barrier?
By looking at the skincare products at pharmacies and supermarkets one thing is clear which is many of them have the same objective. Most of these skincare products focus on treating our body’s outermost layer of the skin which is the skin barrier. These products may work differently being moisturizing, exfoliating or filling but their focus is on the skin barrier. You may now wonder what is the skin barrier? By the way we highly recommend that you also read our article about how to repair skin barrier which also has plenty of interesting information about this topic.
To be able to correctly define what is a skin barrier and what it does we must look closely at the composition of our skin. The skin is composed of several layers and each layer of the skin has its own important and unique functions.
The outermost part of the skin being the skin barrier although being thin works like a hardy wall due to it being composed of skin cells called corneocytes which are tightly bounded.
Let’s Have a Look at the Cells of the Skin Barrier
Now that we have defined in general terms what is the skin barrier let’s have a look at the cells that compose this protective wall which is our skin barrier. By looking closer at the skin cells, we can see that they are composed of keratin and moisturizers.
Furthermore, the lipid layer of the skin barrier is composed of cholesterol, fatty acid and ceramides. This thin wall being our skin barrier job is to essentially keep us alive by keeping harmful toxins and pathogens away. Without our skin barrier toxins and pathogens can enter our body and cause us harm.
Not only does the skin barrier protects us from harmful elements in addition its job is to keep water inside of our body and not allowing it to breakout. Without our skin barrier we will be left dehydrated if the water from our bodies evaporated.
To add further details and expand slightly to what we have already mentioned as what the skin barrier is can be helpful. Besides having the job of keeping external aggravations such as pollution and UV radiation (preventing sun damage) out and keeping water in our body there is one more thing we can add. The skin barrier is also responsible for transporting critical and vital nutrients to our skin. As a whole we can say that is meant to keep our various systems balanced which is essential for our overall health.
The skin barrier plays an essential role in our overall health and needs to be cared for and protected for our body to function properly.
