Abstract

Skin reflects origin, lifestyle, age and state of health. Skin color, tone and evenness, pigmentation, as well as skin surface characteristics are signs of skin’s health. The cosmetic and pharmaceutical industry offers a vast armamentarium of skin care products and procedures to clean, soothe, restore, reinforce, protect and to treat our skin and hence to keep it in “good condition”. Skin care products are readily available in daily life and they play a major role in health and nursing care. The promotion of skin care products including their claims are often based on an effect (e.g., moisturizing, antioxidant), evoked by an active (e.g., urea, tocopherol) that is delivered through a vehicle (e.g., lotion) that relies on a specific technology (e.g., nanotechnology). In addition, “without” claims (e.g., without parabens) often accompany nowadays promotions. Today, modern skin care includes cleansing, soothing, restoring, reinforcing and protecting. With increasing age, the emphasis on skin care is changing. The importance of soothing, restoring, reinforcing increases and cleansing should be executed with particular care. The character of skin care shifts from more cosmetic objectives e smooth, healthy looking skin e to more therapeutic and preventive objectives e soothing, restoring, reinforcing and protecting stressed skin. Even though skin care and skin protection play an important role throughout lifetime the skin areas in primary need of care and protection also change. In younger years, environmental factors (e.g., UV radiation) are of primary importance whereas in advanced years, age-related factors (e.g., prolonged exposure to various sources of moisture, including urine or feces, perspiration, wound exudate, and their contents) become more important. Subsequently the skin areas in need of care and protection also change e initially skin areas (e.g., face, arms, legs) exposed to the external environment and later enclosed skin areas (e.g., skin folds, perianal, perigenital skin, groin, feet) become the vulnerable zones (hot spots). Ageing per se changes the skin structure and function across the life course increasing its susceptibility to numerous clinically relevant skin problems (e.g. xerosis cutis). Skin diseases (e.g., bacterial/fungal infections), accumulating effects of systemic diseases (e.g., diabetes mellitus, renal insufficiency) or pharmacotherapies (e.g., cancer therapies) also necessitate special skin care.