Why do young people's hands get wrinkled when soaking in water, do old people hands?

The hands of children and young people will be wrinkled if soaked for a long time in the water while the hands of the elderly do not suffer. What is the cause of this phenomenon?

>>>Why are fingers wrinkled when soaked in water?

One of the special abilities of human skin is its ability to remain stable even when immersed in cold water or warm water. The soaking process will cause the outer layer of skin to increase in size by 2, 3 times normal because the cells will inflate.

However, when we get older, the skin layers will also become thinner, and so when soaking our limbs we will not be resized as much as when we were younger. Therefore, the hands of children when soaked in water will be much more prone to the hand of the elderly.

The reason our skin is not dissolved in liquid is because of a complex structural protein called keratin . Keratin is located in the outer layer of skin cells and is interwoven with dead squamous cells named corneocyte .

Dr. Myfanwy Evans of the University of Erlangen-Nurnberg (Germany) said: "Keratin and corneocyte will be arranged in fiber form, and this arrangement allows corneocytes to expand, fill water and then return to about the initial size when the water has evaporated - the time when the outer layer structure of the skin returns to its original form ".

However, this outer layer of skin (horny layer, including keratin and squamous cell layer) will still be attached to a layer of skin just below which is unable to absorb water.

"The outer layer of horn will increase the volume very quickly, but the skin layer is attached to the skin layer below that is unable to resize, so the horn layer will have to wrinkle to accommodate the whole new size ".

The thickness of the horny layer on different parts of the body is different. The horny layer on the face is the thinnest and thickest on the hands and heels. That's why the skin at these parts wrinkles the most when soaked in water for long periods of time.

"The fingers also have great curvature, so the skin is also more wrinkled," Dr. Evans said.

Squamous cells are born because our skin layers will continue to renew from bottom to top, from the innermost layers of skin to the outer layers. When we were young, skin cells took only 3 weeks to replace the outer scales. But when the age is high, this process will slow down.

"As people age, this process slows, each layer of skin becomes thinner, and the outer scales will be most affected , " Evans said.

"That's also why older people do not feel as much wrinkled as young people. Their scales are the thinnest and therefore they do not make much difference when cells bulge, so the skin does not need. wrinkles too much to accommodate new volumes ".