I don’t like my tone. No, no… not the smarty-alecky tone of the comments I make to myself (out loud) when I’m scouring the web for health and beauty news. No… it’s my skin tone. Impending wrinkles be damned. The splotchy dark spots on one’s formerly porcelain visage are what actually pack on the years – making a gal look crone-ish well before her time. So let's address this oft-overlooked aging-evidence once and for all.

The first step to solving any crime (and seriously, this aging business is a crime) is facing the facts. Take a good, hard look in the mirror and assess the proverbial damage. There are several types of skin discolorations: sunspots, freckles, melasma, hyperpigmentation and just pesky ol’ blotchiness.

Sun spots, for example are generally caused by the skin’s exposure to UV light. To protect itself, the skin dispatches melanin (This gives the skin it’s color – yes… this is exactly what we were trying to prevent with our Deciphering Suncreen Labels mantra: there is no such thing as a healthy tan.) basically communicating with you that the sun is damaging your skin. Sun spots, however, don’t fade like your accidental tan. No… they stick around and range from the size of a pinhead to a nickel and after years of sun exposure they can appear in random patches. Oh… and did I mention they get darker in the sun? They do.



Now, I’m a fan of freckles, but despite their angel-kisses status they still effect the appearance of skin tone and therefore need to be addressed. “No one fully understands the difference between freckles and sun spots, but freckling appears to be inherited,” says David McDaniel, M.D. assistant professor of clinical dermatology at Easter Virginia Medical School. (Um… thanks for nothing.) What we do know is that freckles are generally smaller than sun spots and can be sprinkles across the nose cheeks and forehead. If you’ve had them since you were a wee tyke, then they’re probably not sun spots – so you may be stuck with them, although there is evidence that they can fade with age. (Yes, I know this is a reversal on the whole splotchy = aging thing. Thanks for the confusion Mother Nature.)

Melasma is another confusing genetic anomaly. Why you and not your bitchy friend? Could be hormones such as estrogen. We don’t really know – but if it seems like all your freckles have merged together to form a mosh-pit on the dance floor of your face, then you probably have it. This condition may show year-round or may just appear and disappear according to how much sun-exposure you’re getting.

If, like me, you can’t seem to keep your mitts off a pimple or other dermis-damaging injury, then you might have some postinflammatory hyperpigmentation (PIH), ‘cause essentially, by picking, you’ve sent the mother of mixed messages to your own natural healing mechanism. Prolonging the healing process basically causes continued inflammation, which signals the cells to cause erratic melanin production. Oh… and it’s genetic too (*sigh) This is particularly a problem for people with darker skin tones.

And for good measure, let’s throw in general blotchiness. Why not? ‘Cause honestly, there is nothing more disappointing than waking up to a dull complexion even though you exfoliate with the discipline of a vow of silenced monk. A dull, dry complexion is a sign from the heavens that you’ve already allowed those evil UV rays to damage your skin, but so far you’re only dealing with small amounts of excess melanin – not enough to ‘cause some of the drama we’ve covered above (sunspots, PIH, etc…), but enough to steal your skin’s luminosity like a thief in the night (sunlight.)




NEXT WEEK: We’ll take a look at the dermatological and cosmetic magic bullets available to treat these splotchy signs of aging. Yeah! Magic!