Ask The Expert: Dermatologist, Professor Caitriona Ryan
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The Pat Kenny Show on News Talk. As we get older, changes to our skin and hair are inevitable. But for women going through menopause, the drop in estrogen can bring some particularly noticeable changes. Drier skin, wrinkles, pigmentation, thinning hair, and unwanted facial hair can all become more apparent. So what is actually happening to our skin during menopause? And is there anything we can do about it? Well, Professor Katrina Ryan is a consultant dermatologist with the Institute of of dermatology and she joins me in the studio. Now you're very welcome to the program, Katrina. Broken Katrina. It's a right bag of laughs being a woman's
sometimes isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Um and I think, you know, perimenopause look, you know, um fortunately is getting a lot more um coverage nowadays. So at least women can expect these changes and be ahead of them, I think now, which makes a big difference.
Talk to me a moment about perimenopause. What is that exactly? And at what age should people begin to expect that it will affect them,
that it
will hit their system?
So it actually perimenopause is the time around menopause and then the sort of the five years leading into it. Menopause is when you have stopped having your periods for a year. So um the changes are happening way way before that. Um and I think more and more women are understanding them. If you're waiting for the ha the half flashes or or your periods to go away, I think a lot of women have missed the boat if they are interested in starting in HRT. But certainly we see the skin and the hair changes well ahead as well. So, um, you know, even when it comes to the collagen content of your skin, you know, from From about twenty-five on, all of us, men and women, lose about one percent um of our collagen content per um per per year.
But when it comes to perimenopause, all of a sudden in that five years you lose thirty percent of the collagen content of your skin. So it is, like some people say, dropping off a cliff. You know, it you know, you see a women see a big change in their skin and it can it can really be um uh upsetting for them, you know, and really uh you know, really affect their confidence as well when they see this sort of for some people it's it's much quicker. Um and um you know they they will say like I age ten years overnight.
Well that's just what I was about to say. It's that sense that one day you look in the mirror and you think what's happened me? What's happened my face? Yeah. And how does that actually show up in your face that very fast 30% drop in confidence.
So it is well the fine lines and wrinkles that we see, but also the l the loss of elasticity of the skin. So women talk about their gowels and their their their jawline and their their face falling down. Um so that's one part of it. Also we lose the lipid barrier in our skin as well. So not lose it fully, but we start the the the lipid content diminishes, which means that people will have drier skin. to them it can look like their skin has become duller um as well. So focusing just on having good moisturizers can really help with that as well. Pigmentation can become a problem. And actually when people are hit on a HRT, especially with estrogen, it can drive hyperpigmentation. So they see brown, brown patches in their skin too.
And then the other thing which I think is so unfair, um, is that In perimenopause, women can start developing acne again. So, like it is something that they mightn't ever have had in their life or had as a teenager, just when the balance uh what as estrogen goes down, the balance between estrogens and our our testosterone like hormones, um the the balance is upset. So that those large sort of cystic acne lesions can start happening in the jawline as well. So
And is that generally in that one particular area, sort of around the chin, the hormonal areas we call it?
Yeah. So that is like that's the i it's not always there, but that's a really sort of characteristic sign. So lower face, jawline, um and they can actually be, you know, quite big and large and painful as well for people.
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