Inflammaging is an unavoidable phenomenon that triggers skin aging and affects all skin types, in particular the most sensitive. It was identified by the medical community, and is now the focus of cosmetic brands, which are developing actives and products to fight it, and are starting to integrate it into their marketing campaigns. A new anti-aging segment is born.
What is inflammaging ?
Inflammaging (or inflamm-aging, inflamm’aging, inflamm-age) derives from the contraction of the terms “inflammation” and “aging”. It was scientifically deciphered in the early 2000s by Professor Franceschi’s team* as a chronic and silent inflammation process that causes numerous pathologies related to age (osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, atherosclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease…). It is also one of the major and latent causes of skin – and hair – aging. As we get older, recurrent micro-inflammations spread across the skin tissue and weaken the cells’ defence system. Their consequences are visible: wrinkles, dehydration, sagging skin, aesthetic disorders, neurosensorial damage, dull complexion… This phenomenon gets worse with time, and affects all epidermis types, in particular sensitive skins, which are more prone to inflammations than others, more weakened by stress, and are more strongly affected by aging phenomena.
Factors contributing to inflammaging
If skin inflammation is a necessary defence phenomenon which usually controls and regulates itself, various internal and external stimuli may provoke and amplify it as we get older:
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environmental pollutants (which are increasingly pointed out and on the agenda of cosmetic research projects),
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solar or artificial UV rays,
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viruses and bacteria,
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stress and diseases,
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fragments of the extracellular …
