the cellular basis of wrinkles.....

Okay, well here's a completely theoretical comment:

youthful skin maintains its elasticity & pliability thanks to a structural protein called collagen. Collagen gets produced by all cells as a way of maintaining cell shape. If you could imagine each cell as a small bean-bag, and the collagen as long matchsticks. If you fill these limp, shapeless beanbags with the matchsticks, the beanbags will take on a more permanent shape. Cells are analogously the same -- they are small bags of protoplasm that can maintain their shape by creating these rods of collagen protein within them. With a mass of collagen rods created within the cells, the cells are able to maintain whatever shape they were programmed for.

The interesting part is that as we age, our cells lose the ability to make the same amount of collagen that we did in our youths. In a youthful person, used, worn-out collagen molecules (through normal, cellular wear 'n tear) will be replaced by newly made collagen, at equivalent rates. But in an older person, the rate of collagen destruction is slightly higher than the rate of collagen production, so that over time, less collegen is found in your cells. The result? Your tissues can't hold themselves up as well, and the flesh begins to sag.

I learned all of this in a gerontology class when I was a biology grad student...

For those who agree with Andreas Moritz that Liver Flushing can help improve bile flow, which will help improve nourishment, which leads to an improvement of the body's metabolism, which leads to higher cellular activity, which can lead to an increase in protein production, we might find the hope that a liver free of stones would enable our cells to make more collagen, hence a delayed or suppressed appearance of wrinkles. Purely theoretical, as I said in the beginning of this message, but something to think about....


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