Saranya Wyles, M.D., Ph.D.

So you really want to be thinking about the skin as a holistic unit and how each cell contributes and influences its neighbors.

And what are the influences that can then shift or disrupt this natural homeostasis?

it's not just you're aging aesthetically because no one likes that it's you're actually aging systemically and no one wants that either exactly and and the idea is that the skin is your reflection right it's your mirror for systemic age but the skin also has this incredible dynamic function so the skin is your thermoregulator it keeps our ability to heat the body

The skin is a sensation organ.

So we can sense and feel the outside environment.

The skin is your barrier protection.

So everything that you're getting exposed to, whether it's smoke, pollution, UV damage, it's your active barrier from the outside world, your largest extrinsic organ.

So it plays a lot of these dynamic roles.

I should also say it also is an organ that actively secretes

and excrete.

So it's secreting sweat and we kind of detoxify the body's waste through that portal.

And we also absorb different topicals and moisturizers within that skin layer.

So it's a very dynamic, hyper-functional organ.

And when you talk about senescence, when senescence accumulates or these zombie cells accumulate, they actively disrupt this functionality of the skin.

So it's not this aesthetic change, but actually this underlying functional change of how you're playing a role physically.

that keeps the whole skin functioning as a unit, right?

And let's talk a minute about senescent cells.

So you asked about the zombie cells and why this happens.

So senescent cells are, it's an evolutionarily conserved process.

This is a good thing.