Stretch Marks

The skin covers the whole of our body. It follows the shape of our muscles and bones, and contours itself to the tissues underneath it. Although a bit elastic, it’s not that expandable to severe changes in the contour of our body, like during pregnancy, during obesity or when doing intense bodybuilding.

The skin is made up of multiple layers of epithelial tissues and collagen. Collagen keeps the form of the skin intact. Continuous stretching of the skin over an expanding tissue, like a muscle, underneath it causes the skin to lose elasticity and this causes the connective fibers in the skin to break. When changes with the contour of the body happens, they cause a disturbance on the production of collagen, and in turn results to scarring of the tissue. This scar, observed as a silvery white hue, is what we call stretch marks. They are so called stretch marks since they appear after an expanding of the skin to accommodate the increase in size of a body.

Stretch marks, although not harmful in itself, causes emotional disturbances with people who have them. Some people with stretch marks become conscious of their bodies that they tend to hide their bodies from other people, and feel insecure about it. Confidence is severely affected, and this sometimes causes other emotional disturbances too. Stretch marks first appear as red or purple lines on the skin, especially on places where there is more body fat stored, like the abdomen, underneath the belly button, the breasts, upper arms, inner and outer thighs, hips, buttocks, and sometimes underarms. These lines generally fade to white and may become unnoticeable after some time when the body returns to its normal shape.

The best treatment for stretch marks is, of course, prevention. We have to be careful of our skin. When we expand in size, like during bodybuilding, obesity, or pregnancy, we have to make sure that we keep our skin emulsified, and give it increased elasticity, and counter the formation of stretch marks. The best known prevention of stretch marks is by applying lotions or stretch mark creams over the prone areas to give it some elasticity and flexibility as our body contour changes. Treatment for stretch marks that are already present, may be a form a surgery, since lotions, can only help fade the appearance of it, and not cure it at all.