Millions of individuals worldwide suffer from dry skin, or xerosis, on an ongoing basis. Sometimes just a temporary situation, dry skin can worsen during winter when humidity drops. For some people however, dry skin doesn't resolve easily leaving them to cope with the uncomfortable symptoms year round.
Dry Skin Symptoms
Dry skin is most commonly found on the arms, lower legs and sides of the abdomen, but this can vary amongst individuals. In addition, the symptoms of dry skin will vary depending on a range of factors including age, health status, external environment and the amount of time spent outdoors.
Skin that is dry may exhibit the following symptoms:
A feeling of skin tightness, especially after showering, bathing or swimming
Skin that appears shrunken or dehydrated
Skin that feels and looks rough rather than smooth
Itching (pruritus) that sometimes may be quite intense. Individuals often scratch to relieve the itch.
Slight to severe flaking, scaling or peeling
Fine lines or cracks; even deep fissures that may bleed
Redness
The Cause of Dry Skin
In order to treat dry skin, it's important to first understand what causes it. Although the skin is divided up into several layers, it is the epidermis or uppermost layer that is affected in cases of […]
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Normal skin has a soft, supple texture because of its water content. For skin to feel soft, pliable and "normal," its top layer must contain a minimum of 10% water and ideally between 20% and 35%. To help protect the outer layer of skin from losing water, the skin's sebaceous glands produce an oily substance called sebum. Sebum is a complex mixture of fatty acids, sugars, waxes and other natural chemicals that form a protective barrier against water evaporation. If the skin doesn't have enough sebum, it loses water and feels dry. If environmental factors cause more water evaporation and overwhelm the ability of sebum to prevent water loss, the skin will shrivel and crack.
Dry skin, also called xerosis, is a very common problem, affecting people of all ages, even infants. Most cases of dry skin are related to one or more of the following factors:
* Decreased production of sebum is often a factor in the elderly, since the number of sebaceous glands in the skin tends to decrease with age. Aging also may cause blood flow to the skin to decrease, causing a drop in sebum production.
* Loss of existing sebum usually is caused by lifestyle factors, such as […]
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When blood begins to pool in a person’s body, and more particularly in the legs and it causes changes to the skin which is due to not enough of venous return, the condition is known as stasis dermatitis and a very usual cause of this condition is a person having varicose veins that can even result in it being called varicose eczema as an alternative name for the same condition. Furthermore, when the patient does not have enough venous return, it causes more pressure being exerted in the capillaries that in turn causes fluids and also cells to leak from the capillaries which in turn results in the breaking down of red cells and thus stasis dermatitis occurs.
Skin Turns Brown
When a person suffers from stasis dermatitis, his or her skin may turn brown and it will generally weaken while also ulcerating in some parts, and when cracks as well as skin that is in poor condition allow bacterial infections to occur it will result in cellulitis infections spreading in the leg, and if such condition worsens, then it is possible for venous ulcers to form.
No doubt, stasis dermatitis is not as prevalent in the US as skin cancer, and dermatophytosis or even xerosis; nevertheless, stasis dermatitis does affect quite a few of the entire population of the United States, and according to studies conducted on its prevalence, it has been found that as many as six to seven percent of patients that have attained fifty years are affected, which is not something that can be treated lightly since it does translate into fifteen to twenty million patients, though there are no statistics available whether such a disease also leads to mortality or morbidity. As far as genders are concerned, it seems that stasis dermatitis does affect women a bit more than men which could be attributed to pregnancy that causes more stress on a woman’s lower-extremity venous system.
People will be more at risk of developing this disease as each decade in their life passes, and in the case of those that have progressed beyond seventy years of age, it has been seen that as many as twenty percent more cases of stasis dermatitis would be likely to occur.
It has also been found that blood tests don’t generally help in managing stasis dermatitis except when a patient is suspected of having cellulitis as well as sepsis or if just one of the two conditions is occurring. The best means of treating the condition is through compression therapy, topical therapy, and prevention/management of the infection.
