Halo Hollywood

Archive for February, 2010

An average person wouldn’t know what a striae distensae is, but mention stretch marks and he will completely know what you are talking about. Stretch marks are caused when the skin is stretched abnormally for a long period of time, breaking down the skin’s support in the form of elastin and collagen. The visibly curled ends of stretch marks are actually the broken elastin fibers underneath the skin.

An example of circumstances causing stretch marks is the sudden weight gain followed by a sudden weight loss. Pregnancy is also one of the most common causes of stretch marks in women. While there are many skin care products available in the market today that claim they can completely eliminate stretch marks, all they could actually do is to lighten the stretch marks appearance to make them less obvious. This is because there are no skin care products or cosmetic ingredients that have the ability to change the structure of the skin and raise the indentations back to where the level of the skin used to be. Thus, stretch marks cannot be completely eliminated.

However, people with stretch marks should not be left without hope. Although they cannot be eliminated completely, stretch marks can be treated with skin care products that contain ingredients such as tretinoin. Tretinoin helps remodel collagen in the skin’s dermis layer while stimulating elastin synthesis causing the skin to improve its texture and color.