"Don't pick that scab, you'll just make it worse!"
Anyone who remembers his childhood scrapes has probably heard that many times. Tissue damage triggers a well-characterized response marked by rapid blood clotting and a recruitment of cells to the injury.
When you remove a scab, you are also removing some of the newly regenerated tissues growing underneath, thereby interfering with the healing process. Many different cell types and proteins are linked to the repair process, but the complexity of the wound response has challenged efforts to determine their specific roles.
What is Wound Healing?
A tissue injury via an incision is generally followed by bleeding. The cascade of vasoconstriction and coagulation starts with clotted blood immediately impregnating the wound, leading to hemostasis, and by dehydration (drying) a scab forms. An influx of inflammatory cells follows, with the release of cellular substances and mediators.
The development of new blood vessels and re-epithelization occur and the deposition of new cellular and extracellular components ensues.
The Wound Healing Process in more detail
Wound healing is a complex and dynamic process of restoring cellular structures and tissue layers.
The process of wound healing is composed of various steps that lead to the development of scar tissue to replace the tissue that has been injured. The human adult wound healing process can be divided into 3 great distinct phases:
1- the inflammatory phase
2- the fibrolastic phase
3- the scar maturation phase
The inflammatory phase occurs immediately following the injury and lasts approximately 6 days.
The fibroblastic phase occurs at the termination of the inflammatory phase and can last up to 4 weeks.
Scar maturation begins at the fourth week and can last for years. These three phases include various processes: chemotaxis, phagocytosis, neocollagenesis, collagen degradation, and collagen remodeling.
In addition, angiogenesis, epithelization, and the production of new glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) and proteoglycans are vital to the wound healing milieu. The culmination of these biological processes results in the replacement of normal skin structures with fibroblastic mediated scar tissue. This process can produce an exuberance of fibroblastic proliferation with a resultant hypertrophic scar, which by definition is confined to the wound site. Further exuberance can result in keloid formation where scar production extends beyond the area of the original insult. Conversely, insufficient healing can result in atrophic scar formation.
How to enhance the Wound Healing Process?
The best skin care creams are not the ones that are rich in elastin and collagen, but those that trigger the generation of collagen, elastin and the water holding molecules of healthy skin from within.
Our cream penetrates through the epidermis layer down into the dermis, where its ingredients go to work to orchestrate the orderly repair of the damaged area.
The cream contains natural biological activators of skin renewal, proteins, enzymes, proteoglycans and glycoproteins that dissolve damaged and dyeing cells and signal your system to start reproducing healthy skin collagen and elastin from within the deep layers of the skin.
Your body utilizes these natural activators to dissolve, "digest" or brekdown damaged collagen and elastin cells into their aminoacid components and releases them for further rebuilding of new skin structures, while at the same time restoring the web of blood vessels that increase oxygenation and nutrition into the newly formed healthy cells.
