Paper thin skin is a real thing.

It isn’t just your imagination: After years of aging and lack of the right nutrients, your skin really does get thinner and thinner. The fat under the skin is lost. Much worse, you lose collagen, elastin, and hyaluronic acid, all essential to a healthy complexion. Oxidation damages and ages your skin.

Here is an explanation of how it happens, and how you can thicken and rebuild paper thin skin.

What you notice first

If you have been saying, “My skin is paper thin,” you have probably had a series of bumps, bruises and scrapes. Your skin bruises at every little bump that most people would hardly notice. (Sometimes you can’t even recall getting a bump, but you have a nasty bruise anyway.) If you scrape your knee even a little, your skin peels away as if you had a major accident.

This isn’t just a problem of appearance. When your skin is this delicate, it is also easily infected, and takes much longer to heal. You may well need medical care for a wound that would hardly bother someone with healthy skin.

What causes the problem

The problem is skin aging. That does NOT mean simply getting older. Some people get super-thin, easily wounded skin long before middle age. Often this is because of long-term use of medical steroids. Generally these drugs are given because of a chronic health condition.

Regardless of the contributing factors, aging skin has specific causes — and passing time is not one of them! Fortunately, all the most important causes of aging skin can be reversed.

Supplements can help your skin and your overall health, too.

Look for a supplement that contains at least 30 mg of SAMe (S-Adenosyl-Methionine) and at least 50 mg of Carnosine. SAMe is a wonderful nutrient involved in a key process called methylation; Carnosine stops glycation, which destroys healthy proteins, including collagen and elastin; Carnosine also has the unique ability to halt glycation which has already begun.

The other supplement that has a powerful record for skin health and repair is omega 3 fish oil. A just-introduced omega 3 fish oil contains the antioxidant astaxanthin, and a lycopene extract. The lycopene complex in this oil has been shown in clinical trials to actually thicken skin, add density, and dramatically reduce scaling and roughness — both very common in aging skin.

Skin care lotion or cream

Several ingredients in skin care lotion or cream have a proven clinical record of reversing the causes of aging skin. They can thicken and toughen skin and renew its flexibility, month after month. Here are some of the best:

— Cynergy TK stimulates the skin’s own natural production of collagen and elastin. It increased new skin cell production by 160 percent and improved skin elasticity by 42 percent in trials with human volunteers. It also reduced inflammation and had powerful antioxidant qualities.

— A seaweed extract called Phytessence Wakame allowed the skin to rebuild its hyaluronic acid levels. In trials, it did this by blocking 52 percent of the action of an enzme that degrades hyaluronic acid.

— If the product contains Coenzyme Q10 in tiny particles, often called a “nano-emulsion,” it can penetrate the skin deeply. In general, other forms of CoQ10 are not well absorbed. With natural vitamin E, CoQ10 makes perhaps the most powerful antioxidant combination in healthy skin.

See my website for more on toughening and thickening paper thin skin.