Nurse Niki

The library

How do hormones affect skin as you age?

Estrogen supports collagen, skin thickness and hydration. As it declines through perimenopause and after, collagen loss accelerates and skin becomes drier, thinner and less elastic — often noticeably faster than in the years before. This is why skin changes and hormonal changes so often arrive in the same year.

People tend to bring me skin and hormones as two separate appointments. They are one conversation.

The collagen loss around the menopausal transition is steep, and it is frequently the thing that sends someone looking for an aesthetic answer when the underlying change is systemic. That does not make the aesthetic answer wrong — it makes it incomplete on its own.

This is what the phrase Health and Beauty Engineer is actually pointing at. Treating the surface while ignoring the system means repeating the treatment more often than you should have to. Treating the system while ignoring the surface ignores something you can see in the mirror every morning, which matters too.

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