How can stretch marks be prevented?

Before stretch marks become visible, skin stretching creates inflammatory reactions: Inflammatory cells activate enzymes and other chemicals that degrade the connective tissues of the skin matrix: collagen and elastin. Down-regulation of pro-inflammatory cytokines is required to prevent the appearance of stretch marks.

Stretch marks start as skin inflammation with dilated capillaries and an irritated appearance with characteristic pink, lavender, and purple hues.

The inflammatory reaction starts to subside, on its own, when new collagen and elastin fibers are quickly created to replace the damaged tissues. Thus, laTter the area affected by structural damage shows a texture with rough fibrotic irregularaties and the marks appear pale white without pigmentation as the new tissues are made of less organized, more fragile, less numerous fibres that have no melanin pigment.

Stretch marks show up after continuous and progressive stretching of weakened skin. Apparently this process leads to an excessive discharge of inflammatory promoters by free standing mast cells residing within the connective tissues which are always ready to react whenever skin is damaged.

The immoderate inflammatory response, ingrained in or immune system during evolution, is intended to quickly cope with damage that could become a thread to our survival. Problem is it may severely injure collagen and elastin connective skin tissues. This response does not seem appropriate in today’s hygienic conditions.

Moderating inflammation with synthetic steroid or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs is not a viable option for the prevention of stretch marks because of their many undesired and dangerous side effects, including risks of malformation of the fetus during pregnancy.

Women have tried to condition their skin with moisturizer creams or lotions while they are pregnant to avoid the stretch marks, but this only has very limited success.

Same with hyper hyped products that claim to supply the skin with soluble collagen and/or elastin, for if you undertand what are stretch marks you would realize immediately why they wont even help to create the connective tissues from within that would repair the injured skin matrix.

Collagen and Elastin Synthesis Boosters May Fail or Fall Short in People Affected by Atrophic Skin.

The most recent stretch mark treatments and prevention products are focused on replenishing skin matrix by stimulating the synthesis of collagen or elastin (e.g. ascorbic acid, copper peptides, palmitoyl pentapeptide, oligopeptides and other). Unfortunately, this method fails to prevent or get rid of stretch marks or falls short in most people affected by atrophic skin and scar tissues, apparently due to the specific chemistry of skin affected by atrophy and an incapacity to answer to matrix synthesis boosters.

Their failure to treat existing stretch marks is possibly due to something crucial absent in those products; an element that would help your body to get rid of scar tissues.

In fact, your body needs two things to accomplish this.

One, your body needs to be able to differentiate or identify scar tissue from the surrounding functional and healthy tissues in the skin matrix.

Second, it must be able to degrade the fibril proteins that those scar tissues are made off and breakdown their component amino-acids liberating them to then use them to generate new skin matrix components.

This can only be accomplished by the action of three types of ingredients that act in concert.

One is messenger molecules that are able to bridge communication between cells and thus (a) differentiate scar tissues from functional and/ or healthy tissues and (b) trigger fibroblast proliferation.

A crucial ingredient is collagenase enzymes that dissolve the non functional, worn out, or damaged tissues that were identified by the messenger molecules.

The third ingredient is oxygen transporting proteins that stimulate the formation of new collagen

Combined methods that consist of some form of abrading —to physically break down some of the more superficial and older scarring—, and a topical base that includes not just moisturizing enhancers or collagen synthesis boosters, but: 1) cell communicating ingredients, 2) enzymes that ‘dissolve’ damaged cells and scar proteins, 3) oxygen transporting molecules that stimulate collagen production from within, plus 4) skin regenerating activators, can effectively reduce the appearance of old stretch marks.

For stretch marks prevention the recipe for success is strengthening the skin while safely moderating the inflammatory response, and this can be accomplished better than anything else by topical application of the biological serum described in this website.