The bottom line: Stretch marks and cellulite

Do you feel like you have more behind you than you used to? If you’ve gained a few pounds over the years, you might have some concerns about cellulite and stretch marks.
Thankfully, our skin is an incredibly elastic organ with the ability to stretch up to eight times its normal limit. As it expands, our outer skin layers always remain intact but sometimes the deeper layers tear under the stress of rapid growth. The tiny tears do not grow back together seamlessly, but instead are filled in with new tissue leaving a noticeably different skin tone. New scars are red, and over time fade to a silvery white. Associated with pregnancy, stretch marks also often result from growth spurts in puberty.

The key components in maintaining strong, stretchable skin are collagen and elastin, and helping your body to produce these is as easy as knowing the alphabet. Make sure you have adequate vitamins A, C, D, and E in your diet, and add some zinc to support the other nutrients in building and repairing tissue. Maintaining a healthy weight is the best way to prevent the development of stretch marks, but if your body is in a period of rapid change experts suggest making sure that your skin is adequately hydrated with jojoba or other oil-based lotion. If stretch marks do occur, treat them when they are less than six months old and still red, because it is very difficult to make improvements to hardened white scars. If you are comfortable with the procedure, laser therapy might help diminish young lines. You can also massage the area around stretch marks to move collagen from healthy skin to the affected area. At least one medical study determined that the application of Retin-A has some success in reducing lines. Topical Vitamin C may also be absorbed through the skin to help with healing.

Exercise can diminish the appearance of existing stretch marks by improving muscle tone and reducing body fat. It can also help improve the quilted appearance of skin known fondly as cellulite by women everywhere. Cellulite affects women of all shapes and sizes, but it most evident on those who are overweight. Although given a fancy name, cellulite is simply fat. In women, fibre bands under the skin form an X and fat becomes trapped where the X attaches to the skin. These bands are very tough and do not stretch, so accumulating fat pushes upward causing the telltale orange peel skin. The connective tissues also thicken with age, making cellulite more difficult to banish the older we get.

It is a perfectly normal and completely harmless condition, unless of course you are one of the 95% of women over the age of thirty who actually has it!

Genetics help to determine the severity of cellulite, and there is a strong connection to our hormones. Estrogen stimulates the storage of fat, which for women tends to accumulate on the waist, hips and thighs. There is a good reason for this—these areas are resistant to starvation, and Nature’s plan is that mothers must be able to nurse their babies. Successive pregnancies contribute more to the problem due to the associated high levels of estrogen and progesterone. Interestingly, studies in the 1970s showed that women with high levels of the male hormone androgen often do not have cellulite.

Besides pregnancy, cellulite has been linked to high fat and/or high sugar diets, high caffeine consumption, processed foods, food allergies and sun exposure, which contributes by aging the skin. Smoking and lack of exercise are also factors because they lead to poor circulation.

Because cellulite involves the entrapment of fat, improving circulation to the affected areas makes a lot of sense. Endermologie, a deep tissue massage using two rollers and a suction, smooths the surface of the skin but there is no evidence that it actually affects cellulite. Manual Lymph Drainage is a light pressure massage, and practitioners claim that the process stimulates the circulation of lymph and the elimination of the toxins. Although proven to help to reduce postoperative swelling, the jury is still out on whether it helps to reduce cellulite. Skin brushing with moderate pressure in an upward motion from ankles to hips can also be used to boost circulation.

The condition of your outer skin also plays a role in how noticeable your cellulite is. Dehydrated skin can look doughy, which emphasizes lumps and bumps. Invest in a good moisture cream that contains retinoids to firm skin and improve elasticity. Try applying gotu kola or horse chestnut to improve the underlining integrity of the skin. Botanical extracts like butcher’s broom, green tea and lemon are thought to enhance skin tone, while exfoliation accelerates cellular turnover and enhances collagen production.

Remember that cellulite is fat, and the best way to get rid of extra fat is to burn it off. Thirty minutes of aerobic activity a few days a week will not only make you look better, it will make you feel better too.