Well, hello, hello, guys. You're listening to Beauty Bites with Dr. Kay, Secrets of a Plastic Surgeon,

and it's time for a five-minute Friday. Today, let's talk about your skin, your fibroblast,

your collagen. What if your skin could make more of its own collagen starting right now. That's right. Your skin can make its own

collagen and today we're talking about fibroblasts. These are the living factories in your dermis that

they build collagen, elastin, and the extracellular matrix of the skin. When fibroblasts work well,

your skin will build more of its own collagen. Your skin will

stay firm, smooth, and quick to repair. But when your fibroblast slowed down, you will see fine lines,

thinning, dulling of the texture. Literally overnight this can happen. And literally in perimenimenopause suddenly you can look down at

your arms and your legs and start to see those skin quality changes of a more elderly person

this is because of the fibroblasts the fibroblasts live in the layer under your skin known as the

dermis they stitch together your skin structure and they also

close the loop after injuries so that you can heal cleanly. In your teens and your 20s, your fibroblasts

are busy. They are the soldiers. They are repairing and you bounce back from every little

insult or injury. You cut yourself shaving. It literally heals in two days. And by the time you are 50,

you cut yourself shaving and it takes like two weeks for that little scratch to go away.

These living factories, they are so important, but with age, sun, pollution, stress,

hormone shifts, poor sleep, all the microplastics and toxins around us. It's very hard for

the fibroblasts to be able to fight back on all those fronts. And then they go quiet. They go

quiescent. They become senescent, zombie-like, middle-aged, slow and dull. Their collagen output

drops about 1% per year after your

20s, and by perimenopause, after you hit menopause in the first five years, collagen

production drops 40%.

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