What You Should Know About Your Skin

Your skin is a protective wrapper. It helps your body to discard water, fetch supplies, it nourishes growing hair, sustains the nails on toes and fingers. It also reports your total health by its texture, color and tone.

With a good healthy skin and a radiant complexion, any woman is well on her way to beauty. Very few of us have perfect skins; with the right care, however, we can do a great deal to improve the general condition of our skin.

Your skin makes up about one-tenth of your body's weight. It consists of three main layers - the epidermis, the cutis and the sub-cutis.
The epidermis, or the topmost skin layer, is itself divided into five cell layers. These are: the horny layer, the glossy layer, the granular-cell layer, the prickle-cell layer and the basal-cell layer.

Cells harden here, thicken and then flake off.

The horny layer is constantly renewed.

The cutis or the lower skin layer contains the sebaceous and sweat glands. The sebaceous -or 'oil' glands lubricate the skin and keep it soft, moist and supple.

These glands can occasionally become over-active due to some emotional disturbance or the presence of male hormones. From this over-activity, acne can result.

The sweat glands pump up perspiration to the surface of the skin. Exposure of sweat to the atmosphere helps to keep the temperature of the body at the correct level through evaporation.