PRIMATES &
HUMAN EVOLUTION
Folds in the skin
Why can't dermatologists see the evidence?
The skin is folded all over.
Folds in the skin have always been ignored and denied of any importance.
People (including scientists) call them lines or wrinkles and fail to understand that the skin is actually folded.
What do you call them?
Lines, wrinkles or folds?
Lines, wrinkles or folds?
The word «lines» doesn't fit.
Surely those are more than just lines; they have a depth and lots of details along their path.
Calling them lines is a simplistic way of describing them.
Are they «wrinkles»?
Most people would say they are not, because wrinkles are characteristic of old and damaged skin.
© Scott Sherrill
What are those grooves in this baby's foot?
They are folds
Close visual and manual inspection only confirms that the skin is folded inwards.
You can trace the origin of these folds back to all the movements, expressions and positions you've taken, made or held during your life.
Their path has tightened and solidified resulting in permanent folds.
The skin is so badly bent that it doubles up, and that one part now lies on another. A section of skin is emprisoned.
Epidermis over epidermis.
FOLDS ON THE FOREHEAD
FOLDS ON THE NECK
FOLDS ON THE WRIST
FOLDS ON THE ELBOW
Do these look like lines and wrinkles,
or is the skin completely folded over?
Like a pleated or folded fabric
Skin is a tissue.
Just like any tissue, it can be crumpled, folded and creased.
There is one easy way to find out.
Use your nails.
Simply press your nail onto the bottom of any fold on your body.
Put moderate pressure and explore.
Follow the path of the fold.
You can feel that the skin is folded,
and that the pressure you apply
opens up the fold.
Folds are bad for your health
Your system treats folds like injuries
Your skin is a living tissue.
It contains blood vessels, nerves, hair follicles, sweat glands, touch, pressure, heat and pain receptors, ...
Skin is very elastic; it needs to because your movements deform it considerably.
It can withstand repetitive folding, but there is a limit to what it can endure.
Folding the skin affects the performance of all its components.
One can marvel that such a complex and delicate structure can be pinched and folded so easily.
However, when your skin is folded too often, it fears rupture and it paves the bottom of the furrow with epidermis cells, making the fold permanent.
Permanent folds and body movements
Flex your wrist several times and take a close look at the folding that this action creates.
Notice that some folds do not disappear completely when the articulation is straight.
These folds seem etched into your body because you have done this movement so frequently throughout your life.
Those are permanent folds.
Permanent fold formation
When the folding in the skin occurs at the same place repeatedly, your system generates epidermis cells to pave the bottom of the groove of the fold.
Coats of fresh epidermis cells hold the fold in place and prevent any damage to the skin.
Of course, when a fold becomes permanent, the trajectory and placement of its components becomes altered and this affects their performance.
Wrinkles
A wrinkle is simply the first step in the formation of a permanent fold.
With time, a wrinkle will become a fold.
Every large fold on your body has started out as a wrinkle.
When permanent folds first establish themselves, they pave the bottom of the crease, layer by layer, with epidermis cells.
It may take several years before the fold to becomes plainly visible.
The coats of epidermis cells that hold the fold in place are produced slowly over time.
We all have similar folds
Similar folds on everyone
When I first found out about the folds, I thought that each human was folded differently, explaining the diversity of our looks.
Well, I was half wrong.
In fact, most folds are common and comparable from one human to another.
We look different because some folds have a slightly different position and depth, but mostly because of our bone structure beneath.
The similarities are much greater than the differences.
We are all folded the same way.
Differences
Differences often lie in the size, angle and depth the same fold can take among humans.
Early in life, the shape of the skull is very important, the alignment of its parts particularly.
For example, the fold going from the side of the eye to the top of the ears is obviously affected by their respective positions.
Most of the distinctions come from how big the fold has become along its path.
This, in turn, depends on each individual's actions.
The way your nose is twisted, the way your eyes look, the way your eyebrows are formed, ... represent years of nose twitching, eye squinting or worried facial expressions.
Fold complexity
Folds are illustrated here as simple lines.
They are not so on your body.
Each fold is a complex monster, full of details.
They are made of several coats, each one with a real life history.
A typical fold has hundreds of coats.
They are also far from straight.
Folds multiply, so you may find several parallel folds instead of one when you check on your body.
Why are the folds so hard to see?
Three main reasons explain why your sight is deceived;
1• The skin's wound healing process paves over them
Your skin considers folds and their crossings as injuries and tries to repair the damage.
The wound healing process coats every hole and crack with fresh epidermis cells to preserve the skin's integrity.
2• All you see are the seams
Folds and their crossings keep on growing and become huge intra-cutaneous structures.
They do this by deepening and bringing more and more skin into them.
Their entire mass is beneath the surface and from the outside, all you can see is a simple seam.
Seam on a coat
seen from
outside
Same seam
seen from
inside
3• It's all epidermis
Most of the folding is hard to distinguish, because it is made of epidermis over epidermis.
A very tight seam, with no stitches, with perfect color matching is not easy to detect.
Even a microscope would only reveal patterns of epidermis cells.
To your ultra-sensitive nails and fingertips though, the folds are like mountains and canyons.
Next - The main folds on the human body
Pressure grooming
Superficial grooming
SKIN CARE
Striking blood
What is unpain?
BEAUTY
A pain-free old age
Human beauty
How to react to itch
You're not supposed to be ugly
FOLDS & SKIN THEORY
Ugly males
The dermis
HUMAN EVOLUTION
Earth and life history timeline
PRIMATES