The mindbodygreen Podcast
632: The science of skin aging & how to slow it down | Saranya Wyles, M.D., Ph.D.
11 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to the My Buddy Green podcast. I'm Jason Wachub, founder and co-CEO of My Buddy Green and your host. Your skin is one of the most powerful windows into how well you're aging.
Chapter 2: What is the connection between skin and systemic aging?
Those freckles, fine lines, and sudden overnight changes we all notice were actually reflecting deep cellular shifts happening throughout the body. And today's guest is here to change the way you think about skin altogether.
Chapter 3: What are the markers of skin aging?
dr saranya wiles is a dermatologist regenerative medicine scientist and the director of regenerative dermatology and skin longevity lab at the mayo clinic her research sits at the cutting edge of aging biology looking at how cellular senescence wound healing inflammation and regenerative therapies shape not only how our skin looks but how it functions as a true longevity organ
Chapter 4: How do senescent cells affect aging?
In today's show, we'll dive into some fascinating topics, including how your skin reflects systemic aging and why it may be your most visible biomarker of long-term health. We also cover what zombie cells actually are and how they accelerate both skin aging and whole body aging as well.
Chapter 5: What are the five pillars of skinspan for longevity?
Plus, you'll learn about the five pillars of skin longevity and the future of regenerative dermatology. This episode is packed with actionable insights.
Chapter 6: How can diet improve skin health?
Let's dive in. So you started in dermatology and regenerative medicine.
Chapter 7: What role does exercise play in skin longevity?
What shifted your focus from aesthetics toward the deeper biology of aging skin?
Chapter 8: What are the best topical products for skin health?
Skin health is an incredible part of how we age systemically. Skin is our largest organ. Think about it as our longest relationship. And it's our most visible biomarker of how we're aging on the inside. So looking at skin was a natural way to see how cues of systemic aging and systemic health could just present on your skin.
So at Mayo Clinic, I lead a research lab called the Regenerative Dermatology and Skin Longevity Lab. And we started exploring these different biomarkers, starting from how the skin ages naturally with age and how inflammatory skin diseases like atopic dermatitis, psoriasis, and even aspects of wound healing can be disrupted with age.
And so how does one get a sense of how their skin is aging?
Yeah. So the skin is the naturally largest regenerative organ. So our skin turns over every 30 days. So every 30 days, the skin rebuilds and the rest becomes, I call it dust on the floor, right? So it basically sheds over. And this process is how we can kind of time the different ways that the skin is showing healthy barrier and healthy barrier repair. Okay.
So when the skin starts to age, there are two aspects of change that we can look at. There is structural change and there is functional change. So structural change, this is what we're seeing physically. Some things like how our melanocytes are aging. you know, we lose melanocytes over time and about 10% or 20% with each decade, you lose melanocytes. And this is your active melanin production.
This is your active pigment production. When you lose that ability, it actually contributes to dullness, to dispigmentation, to ineffective ways of combating UV protection. So when this happens, you're losing both functional ability for skin protection against UV damage and you lose structural change.
So you start to see dyspigmentation and a lot of my patients come in and say, all of a sudden I noticed this brown spot on my skin. It's happened overnight. All of a sudden I'm seeing this change. So skin aging can feel like it happens overnight, but really it's years of molecular underlying biological damage that accumulates and it manifests as structural and functional change.
And so with melanocytes specifically, is there anything we can proactively do to stop this from happening or potentially reverse the damage?
We look at the skin as a collective unit. So think about it as epidermal aging, epidermal regeneration, and dermal aging and dermal regeneration. So melanocytes live in the epidermis. They're part of that milieu or microenvironment. They interact with keratinocytes. And then in the dermal aging, this is fibroblasts, macrophages, immune cells are also there.
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