Why is My Skin Getting Darker as I Get Older?
Darkening of the skin is a significant problem for both males and females, and sometimes with age, the skin starts to darken. The complexion sometimes becomes dull as we get older. There could be multiple reasons for the darkening of the skin. One of the essential factors is aging. With age, the skin changes, the tissues in the skin start to work differently.
Moreover, the exposure to sunlight and ultraviolet radiation increases with the increase of age. People start spending most of the time working, and thus they cannot pay much of their attention to their skins. With age, the tissues lose the hydration inside, and they start to decolorize. This decolorizing can lead to various hazards, but the deadliest of them is the darkening of the skin.
These are several causes of skin darkening as we get old. These include are Sunshine/suntan, Problems like eczema, due to fungi attack, skin damage, Addison disease, Problems like Nigricans, Skin cancers, Pregnancy, and Vitiligo.
More than this, skin is exposing in front of sunlight; many other factors can lead to darkening the skin. Now the point to ponder is the reasons which are responsible for the darkening of the skin, either is harmful or not. There is a requirement to concentrate on the pattern of the skin tone darkening. If the skin is getting dark according to age and the mode is slow.
It might be only the age factor, but if the skin is getting dark every day. The skin is becoming tan and black with a much faster speed. Then there is a need to concentrate on the problem. If you find the problem is hazardous, you should concern your dermatologist for this purpose.
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Why is My Skin Getting Darker as I Get Older?
There can be various reasons for skin darkening, but some of the significant reasons are as follow. According to the sequences and occurrence, you can estimate either the problem is deadly or it’s not.
Pregnancy can make your skin dark
Pregnancy is a factor that is involved in the darkening of the skin. It at least changes the tone of the skin, and skin changes its color without any pattern. With every day passing, the surface of the pregnant lady becomes darker. As the vitiligo causes the loss of pigmentation, there is a mask that originates during pregnancy, this mask known as a pregnancy mask.
This mask referred to as melasma. This melasma is reverse of the vitiligo, makes more pigment and due to the formation of the excessive pigment. Some patches start to generate. In the beginning, these patches might not be black. These patches can be black or grey, and these can change the tone of the pregnant women’s skin. These patches make the skin tone worse every day.
As soon as the days of delivery come near, the pieces become more severe, and the exposure to sunlight becomes difficult. In such cases, you should concern to the dermatologist and should get some acid peeling or bleaching to get rid of a darker tone.
Sunshine/suntan
With the increasing age, exposure to sunlight becomes more frequent. The epithelium tissues in the epidermis of the skin are soft, pinkish and hence are so delicate. Constant exposure of ultraviolet radiation from the skin starts to give a challenge to the surface. But the people who work under the sunroof daily.
They start losing the immunity to fight with the sunlight and with the loss. The sufferer begins damaging the epithelial tissue. The skin becomes lighter in the tone, and eventually, the complexion becomes darker. The immunity of the tissues gets lost, and the person receives an uneven tone of the various part s of the body.
These might be a clear difference among parts that exposed to skin or that hidden from the ultraviolet radiation. This darkening of the tone by the sunlight or ultraviolet radiation is called the suntan. This issue is curable and can treat in several easy ways.
Deficiency of melanocytes with age
Melanocytes are the cells that produce melanin in the epithelium or the skin with the process of aging and with photoaged skin. The skin starts losing the melanocytes. The exposure to sunlight damaged the melanocytes. But it’s not just about the sunlight exposure.
The melanocytes decrease with every decade for approximately eight percent. This decrease in melanocytes directly reduces the pigmentation. The result of the loss of melanocytes with age causes the darkening of the skin.
Problems like eczema
This kind of condition mostly occurs at an early age as the child starts growing day by day. The exposure to sunlight increases. In some kids, a condition called Pityriasis Alba occurs. In this condition, the child firstly gets the red patches on the skin. These patches just lighten the surface, but most of the people assume that the child is suffering from vitiligo as there is loss of pigmentation in the child with growing age.
But this condition is a form of eczema which can occur in children with increasing age. This condition can cause the darkening of the skin, and the skin gets tan. The situation is curable with the help of a topical steroid. With the loss of eczema, the pigmentation starts coming back, and the skin becomes fair and clean.
Citrus mixed with sunshine
This condition of skin darkening occurs in people with a growing age. The problem is associated with the summers and sunlight availability days. This condition of lime mixed with sunshine is called Phytophotodermatitis.
In this specific condition, the sufferer is allergic to some kind of citrus, as well as sunlight. In summers, people love to drink summer drinks with citrus fruit juices. After the infusion of extract, they go to the sunshine, and the skin gets exposed.
There is no friendship between the citrus and sunlight. In the starting small red patches occurs on the surface. After sometimes, the spots start to darken the skin, and skin begins tanning. Precautions and treatment can treat this. But this kind of skin darkening is not permanent.
Damage of skin
Sometimes the darkening of the skin tone occurs when the laydown person goes through some type of injury. In the damage, the wound gets exposed to the sunlight and the environmental factors. The skin becomes darker at that point, and day by day, the skin tone gets darker. This condition is called post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation.
There is an accumulation of pigment at the place of the wound, which makes the sound dull and more mysterious. Some other conditions like acne can bring darkness to the skin of the person. The skin becomes darker at those specific places where the acne happened. These inflammatory conditions like acne or any other allergy which interferes in the darkening of the skin are called psoriasis.
Fungi
This kind of skin darkening condition is usually associated with sweating conditions. The people suffer this kind of skin darkening in the summer seasons. Or the people who are living in the hot climate are more risky to get attacked by this condition.
Due to the warm weather and exposure of the skin to the heat, harmless infection occurs. This infection is known as Tinea versicolor infection. The disease is so innocuous that some of the people don’t even notice the infection.
Skin cancers
Cancer is one of the dangerous and worst conditions that can ever happen to anyone. But sometimes, due to some circumstances, the tumor develops in the skin of a person. These cancers occur with the increasing age. Most of the time there are mole in the tissue which turn the membranes of the epithelium darken. These moles cause a patch or dark spot, and then this prevails in the whole skin.
With these darkened spots and dark color patches, the entire surface starts to get dark. This condition occurs in melanoma as well when the skin starts to get blue. The blue color in the skin begins to darken the skin and make the complexion dark. The person who is going through dark skin can easily understand that how was the color of skin before, how color is now. In such severe conditions, you should go to a dermatologist.
Other conditions
Sometimes the problem of skin darkening is not associated with the skin directly. It is associated with the adrenal parts. Sometimes the adrenal glands fail to produces some hormones. These hormones are directly or indirectly related to the production of the pigments for skin. Due to a lack of hormone and loss of pigments, a condition evolves. This condition is known as Addison’s disease.
The diseases cause tanning of the skin without exposure to the sunlight. There is another condition which can occur with age. The situation is called acanthosis nigricans.In this condition, the darkening of the skin folds occurs. These skin folds might occur under the breasts and in the neck area.
These specific folds get dark, and the tone starts getting darker. This condition can occur because you might be overweight may be. The problem is harmless and can treated with the help of creams and other medicaments prescribed by the dermatologist.
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