Doctors N Health Land

It’s important to always touch your face gently – never rub your eyes hard, and apply skin care products on yourself the way you would apply them on a baby. We can sometimes forget that our skin, particularly our face, is delicate. Pulling, tugging, and scrubbing the skin will only wear it out faster. To properly take care of our skin, we need to address all of its layers. Many people use several different products from several different companies all at once.

Skin care lines create their products to work together synergistically. This means that each product builds off another to ensure proper acidity is restored to the skin.Remember the acid mantle that sits on the surface of your skin? It turns out that thin layer of sweat and oil is actually very important to the way your skin feels and looks! When you use products from several different companies, your skin is left out of balance. Oily people tend to have skin that is less acidic, even basic, which is why they’re so prone to blemishes. Their skin isn’t able to properly protect itself from bacteria. Dry skin people tend to have very acidic skin.

In order to move forward, you really should have a better understanding of the skin. How can you pick good skin care if you don’t even know why you’re cleaning your skin? To start, your skin is the largest organ in your body. Yes, it’s an organ, just like your heart, lungs, or kidneys. The skin keeps us warm, protected, and holds all our many parts together. It’s also largely responsible for eliminating wastes and maintaining our constant body temperature. The skin is built in layers, like a sandwich. I

f you were to take your skin and stretch it out, it would stretch about 18 square feet and weigh over seven pounds. That’s a lot of surface area! The layers that make up the skin are very important when discussing skin care. The first layer is the epidermis, a thin layer of tightly packed cells that are constantly being shed. Protecting the epidermis is a layer of sebaceous oil perspiration called the acid mantle. The slight acidity of this coating protects the skin from bacteria. Below the epidermis is the dermis, a middle layer that gives our skin strength and flexibility. Collagen and elastin fibers, two big players in aging skin, are located here and it’s predominately their fault when your skin starts to sag and wrinkle.

Minor or even deep wounds to the skin and underlying tissues can be closed by using Butterfly tape or by suturing. Taping or suturing should be done when the wound is large, clean and non-jagged. Wounds of the chest and abdomen will be considered later in this booklet.

Do not close a wound if the area of the wound is dirty (contaminated), is very deep (into fatty fascia or even deeper, into muscle), or is over 12 hours old. Bleeding is to be controlled, by pressure or by tourniquet if necessary. If the wound cannot be closed, tape a sterile or clean, moistened bandage over the entire wound and seek medical assistance immediately.
First review the anatomy of the skin and underlying tissues of the limbs in the following illustration:

Things to remember: Skin thickness varies. It is thinnest over the eyelids and face and thickest on the palms of the hand and soles of the feet, the back and scalp. It is usually thinner over ventral (anterior) surfaces and in older people. Bringing the edges of the skin together by suturing will be shown.