New skin theory

Human skin was designed
to be groomed daily

Skin layers

Skin is an amazingly complex multi-functional organ.
Your skin has three basic layers, which are then redivided into sublayers.

Skin thickness

Your skin is naturally thicker in some places, such as your palms and soles, and thinner in others, such as your eyelids or simply the other side of your hands and feet.
Unfortunately, the skin of your whole body has thickened considerably.
Due to your lack of grooming, it is now several times what it should be.
Look at a baby’s skin and you will see thin skin.
The thickening is mostly due to the way your skin is folded.

Different everywhere

Your skin knows where it is on your body.
Each place has its specific skin.
Every spot is different.

 

The epidermis

It is the skin’s surface, the outermost layer.
Its thickness varies, but remains very thin.
Grooming concerns only the top of the epidermis where the cells are dead.
Because of its importance we will spend more time studying it.

The epidermis sublayers

The epidermis is equipped with a self renewal system, comparable to some animals shedding their skin.
The difference is that the process is continuous.
The bottom layers are a cell producing factory.
The cells arrive lifeless and crushed at the corneal layer.

The epidermis formation layers

At the bottom of the epidermis lies the basal layer where millions of new epidermis cells are produced every day through mitosis or cell division.
These cells get flattened and hardened as they climb up the epidermis. This takes close to a month.
When they reach the corneal layer, the cells are dead.

The corneal layer

It is the top layer of your skin.
The one we can see.
Corneum means “horn”.
It is composed of deceased and deformed cells that are supposed to flake off daily.
This system does not work without the help of grooming

Layers and coats

Each layer consists of several coats of cells.
The cells are held together by proteins acting the way metal rods hold armored cement together.
They go up the epidermis as a flat, impermeable coat.
This explains the solidity of the epidermis, but also why it is shed in fine flakes or coats.

Specific epidermis formation

One would expect skin to produce epidermis equally over its surface.
Things are a bit different.
Your skin knows where problems occur and works in specific ways in those areas.
Every night, while you're sleeping, your body has time to take care of some regenerative bodily tasks.
This is when epidermal formation occurs.
Your skin sends a new set of cells up the layers of its epidermis.
Not everywhere though, it has troublespots that need immediate response.

Epidermis formation goals

Specific epidermis formation has at least two objectives:
-Skin protection: Where new epidermis is formed in response   to the heat caused by your repeated actions or to the bad   treatment and injuries it withstands.
-Skin beautification: Where the new epidermis is formed to   hide, fill and cover existing anomalies. Your body wants to   look presentable.

The corneal layer and age

Babies have very thin corneal layers.
Science says that the skin of children is immature. It has not yet fully developed and is unprotected.
Let me express my divergence.
Look at their skin and you see absolutely beautiful, healthy skin
It has a natural shine and its flexibility permits those endearing facial expressions.
The problem is with the skin of adults.
Since they haven’t groomed, the corneal layer of their skin has become dreadfully thickened, folded, compressed, tight, ...
In some areas it has become so hard it will take you years of grooming just to get past it.
Its number of coats may have climbed into the thousands.

Reduced epidermis formation

During your youth, lack of grooming alters the normal operation of this skin renewal system.
A thick crust is formed, inhibiting and slowing down every function of your skin: feel, perspiration, sebum, hair, ...
It stops the normal exfoliation of dead epidermis cells.
Your skin's corneal layer gets thicker and thicker.
New epidermis production is slowed down, sometimes halted.
Your skin should stay the same all your life, except for changes at puberty.
Regular grooming goes hand in hand with the natural epidermis formation and desquamation process of your skin.
What is produced daily is removed daily.

Grooming the corneal layer

The top part of the corneal layer has to be removed.
Your flat nails are the perfect tools for the job.
These cells are lifeless.

Science tells us there are only about fifteen to twenty coats of cells.
I have personally removed over a thousand piled-up, compressed flakes of skin in some places.

The corneal layer and folds

In spite of all what we have just seen, the corneal layer's thickening is not the main reason for your skin's general thickening.
The folds are responsible (we will discuss that below).
In some places, like your scalp or the top of your chin, the corneal layer has become so hard it prevents you from feeling the folds below.
Even the most resistant floor varnishes don't come close in comparison, your nails have no adherence and they slide.

 

The dermis

The supple and resistant dermis is several times thicker than the epidermis. Its water content is over 60%.
It is made of dense fibrous connective tissue, primarily collagen. Another fiber is elastin, your head has more of it.
Together they give your skin its super elasticity.
The dermis repairs injured tissue.

Dermis components

An area of your skin may contain various amounts of the following constituents. Some are found only in specific locations.

•Blood vessels

The dermis is laced with tiny blood vessels.
Capilaries find their way up into the epidermis.

•Free nerve endings

Bundles of nerves reach up into the epidermis.
These neurons communicate bilaterally with your brain, but also do so between each other, thus creating a neuronal grid all over your body.
Free nerve endings are responsible for detecting temperature, mechanical stimuli (such as pressure), pain, and touch. information.

•Hair follicles with sebum glands

Hair is a compressed, filamentous creation of the skin found only in mammals.

Each hair follicle has:
-Blood vessels feeding it
-Nerve endings (each one can feel)
-A muscle
-One or more sebum glands
-...

The hair is supposed to be loose at the top of the follicle.
Sebum escapes through the free space around the hair in the hair shaft.
Even though humans are labeled as hairless apes, you have hair follicles everywhere on your body except for your palms, soles, lips, eyelids, penis, labia minora and nipples.

•Sweat glands

Called eccrine glands, most are part of your thermo-regulating system.
Sweat, almost all water, is cooled by your movements while it evaporates, thus reducing your internal temperature.

Some sweat glands are different. Those on your forehead, underarms, palm and soles respond to psychological stress.

•Specialized receptors

Some areas of your body also contain specialized nervous receptors.

They complement the information from the free nerve endings through tiny corpuscles.
What each one does precisely is still debated, but some seem to react more to specific types of stimulation such as heat, pressure, ...
There is an astonishing concentration of such receptors on your fingertips, making them the most sensitive part of you.

Papillary ridges

The top of the dermis is undulated, mostly on your palms and soles.
These ridges are commonly known as fingerprints.
My suggestion is that these are supposed to be horizontal, thus producing a better grip.
Pre-natal folding gives them their personal patterns, but you can see how these are crossed by bigger folds when your hands are wet.

 

The hypodermis or subcutis

This is a layer of fat between your skin and whatever lies beneath it, muscle, bone, organ, cartilage, gland, ...
The hypodermis is not necessarily considered as being part of the skin.
Your body uses it for insulation and as an energy reserve.
Blood vessels and nerves travel through it to reach into the skin.

 

Additional views

Langer’s lines

This is what the folds are called in dermatology manuals.
Not understanding that the skin is folded, science has named what it could see of the folds "Langer’s lines" and describes them as deep bundles of collagen inside the skin.
Surgeons try to cut on them, when they can see them, in order to obscure their work.
The existing maps of these lines on the body resemble my horizontal and vertical folds illustrations.
I'm sorry to say they are very wrong.
These are not lines but folds, and they could not be seen, only felt.

Sebum

Sebum glands were designed with grooming in mind.
There are about six times more of them on your head, where you are more folded and where more grooming is needed.
Known as "sebaceous glands", they are attached to top of the hair follicles.
Here's how it works:
As your fingertip and nail pass over your skin, they bend the base of the hair they encounter.

This creates a mechanical pressure on the sebum glands to release some of their content.
Because of this, sebum glands are big on smaller hair (neck) and small on bigger hair (beard).
Sebum, an oily, waxy substance that is unique to mammals, lubricates the skin while you groom.
It also keeps hair and fur shiny, flexible, impermeable, ...
Regular grooming frees the glands from their content.
Failure to do so has resulted, in our race, in huge glands compared to chimpanzees.
Sebum is held prisoner with very nasty consequences.
People have no idea what the glands are for.
Your lips, eyelids, penis, labia minora and nipples are hairless, but they still have sebum glands. It reaches the surface through ducts.
Since your palms and soles have none, their skin is special. It is thicker and easily groomable. You can even see the folds there.
On a human fetus, these same sebum glands secrete the white substance called Vernix caseosa.

Skin orientation

Skin is an organic tissue.
My suggestion is that the orientation of the skin’s various elements, cells, fibers, ..., follows a general horizontal-vertical axis.
We all are familiar with woven materials which exhibit a similar foundation.
We can also see it in our food.
This orientation favors straight, on-axis folding of the skin.

Hair muscle

The "arrector pili" muscles actually pull your hair out of your skin.
This creates elevations called “goose bumps”.
Under the control of the autonomic nervous system, they react to fear, cold, excitement, ...
Shivering is caused by these muscles contracting and relaxing cyclically, generating heat.
Unfortunately, the skin on your head is so folded that the muscles do not function.
Your hair should stand stiff on head when you’re emotionally charged the way it does for other groomed primates.