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Skin health can be used to predict a number of seemingly unconnected factors

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61–70 of 101 posts

Re: Skin health can be used to predict a number of seemingly unconnected factors

#61
post #31

Folk history judges people by the quality of their skin (to the dismay of adolescents in particular). You see it in hollywood and in literature: the hero has clear skin while the villain is surprisingly often described as being disfigured. This could stem from a long practice of disease avoidance before modern medicine, even when no disease is relevant (a birthmark, recovered from smallpox, etc). Years ago I worked i…

Historically the notions of cleanliness and health are excpetionally strongly aligned with virtue, and filth, disease, ugliness, and disability with sin or evil. This appears across a large range of Eurasian cultures that I'm aware of, and quite probably even more widely elsewhere (though I'm less aware of those).

Even such attributes as handedness can be ascribed to virtue or sin, as with, well, sinister, literally, "of the left side", but with the evolved sense of "prompted by malice or ill-will". See: https://www.etymonline.com/word/sinister>

(And apparently "sinister" and "sin" are not related, though that possibility had occurred to me whilst writing this.)

The same concept often extended to medicine and medical practice, and it wasn't until the emergence of germ theory of infectious disease that medical knowledge and practice began to emerge from its moralising of pathology to a general understanding of disease and dysfunction as being organic in nature. That shift is still incomplete, and there are places, institutions, individuals, and conditions in which moralisation remains a too-common occurance (obesity, addiction, sexually-transmitted diseases, and mental health most especially). We also see moralisation of pathology in other contexts, most notably in criminal law and politics.

Re: Skin health can be used to predict a number of seemingly unconnected factors

#62
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, but have you seen the skin of Wim Hof? I love the guy but I wouldn’t say his face is particularly youthful

I mean, he's 64. No part of him is "youthful" except his attitude.

That’s only a little bit older than Paul Rudd.

Re: Skin health can be used to predict a number of seemingly unconnected factors

#63
post #8

I like to try and guess people's ages. In real life, or on video, where their personalities influence my guess, I'm much worse than when looking at a still image. With a still image often the quality of a person's skin is the only giveaway, and when that is the case I'm remarkably accurate most of the time. So I'm skeptical there's much one can do, and people's skin seems to age at roughly the same rate.

Easiest way to guess a person's age is by the relative size of the ears, that never stop growing. Tiny ears - teenager. Huge ears - senior. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18653105/

Hands don’t lie.

Re: Skin health can be used to predict a number of seemingly unconnected factors

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.skinema.com/ > "Beauty equals good" is an age-old trope in entertainment, points out Doris Bazzini, a professor of social psychology at Appalachian State University. In a 1999 study she co-authored, a panel watched 20 of the top-grossing movies in each decade from 1940 to 1989, rating characters by attractiveness and other traits. They found that the stereotype held true across all decades and genres. She…

It's always tempting to impute / unlikely virtues to the cute

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. A handsome woman talks nonsense, you listen and hear not nonsense but cleverness.” - Leo Tolstoy, 1889.

Re: Skin health can be used to predict a number of seemingly unconnected factors

#65
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easiest way to guess a person's age is by the relative size of the ears, that never stop growing. Tiny ears - teenager. Huge ears - senior. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18653105/

I wonder if this is a common target for cosmetic surgery? "Shaving" off bits of the ears to make them smaller?

Or maybe more doable: preventative measures like "ear retainers" for nighttime?

Re: Skin health can be used to predict a number of seemingly unconnected factors

#66
post #24

I’ve been applying DIY 20% ascorbic acid solution on my face for a few weeks, and am seeing some benefits already. Photoaging and spots seem to revert a bit, and there is definitely some lightening (as expected [1]). According to some Reddit posts, it takes a few months until the improved collagen synthesis becomes noticeable. Vitamin C serums are quite expensive because ascorbic acid oxidizes quickly, and other form…

Interesting, though why would a person want to do this skin depigmentation? Is it like people dying their hair color?

I think the presumption here is that they are white and reducing the look of dark spots and not someone with darker skin lightening it overall.

A challenge with skin-related literature (and internet comments) is that there's always the unspoken assumption that you're talking about a white person unless stated otherwise. Even the article reads oddly of you start off thinking of them as a dark skinned person.

Re: Skin health can be used to predict a number of seemingly unconnected factors

#67
post #31

Folk history judges people by the quality of their skin (to the dismay of adolescents in particular). You see it in hollywood and in literature: the hero has clear skin while the villain is surprisingly often described as being disfigured. This could stem from a long practice of disease avoidance before modern medicine, even when no disease is relevant (a birthmark, recovered from smallpox, etc). Years ago I worked i…

Historically the notions of cleanliness and health are excpetionally strongly aligned with virtue, and filth, disease, ugliness, and disability with sin or evil. This appears across a large range of Eurasian cultures that I'm aware of, and quite probably even more widely elsewhere (though I'm less aware of those). Even such attributes as handedness can be ascribed to virtue or sin, as with, well, sinister , literally…

Yeah, I believe that the absurd “virgin” obsession in some cultures is an archaic holdover to try to avoid STDs.

Re: Skin health can be used to predict a number of seemingly unconnected factors

#68
post #31

Folk history judges people by the quality of their skin (to the dismay of adolescents in particular). You see it in hollywood and in literature: the hero has clear skin while the villain is surprisingly often described as being disfigured. This could stem from a long practice of disease avoidance before modern medicine, even when no disease is relevant (a birthmark, recovered from smallpox, etc). Years ago I worked i…

An autoimmune skin condition damn near ruined my life, so I agree with your conclusions.

I was somewhat fortunate that it didn't hit me until my mid-20s after a viral infection. Never gets better and will never go away. Treatments? Nothing but a cat and mouse game, and generally a waste of time, unless I want to subjugate my body and future to some truly heinous treatments.

Still, I have a lot to be thankful for e.g., it could be worse, a different disease, etc..

I think the hardest part for me to overcome is the envy I feel when I see other people. I sometimes actually feel like I am a lesser person because of the disease. Despite it being a skin disease, the mental toll has been far worse than the physical toll.

Re: Skin health can be used to predict a number of seemingly unconnected factors

#70

What about this? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26992108/ >Results: Women with active sun exposure habits were mainly at a lower risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and noncancer/non-CVD death as compared to those who avoided sun exposure. As a result of their increased survival, the relative contribution of cancer death increased in these women. Nonsmokers who avoided sun exposure had a life expectancy similar to…

It's amazing that people take hopelessly confounded studies like this and infer anything from them. Yes the study says they tried to remove confounders. But if people could effectively remove confounders, there'd be no need for randomized trials (which are enormously expensive). Despite doing everything possible, scientists' best efforts to remove confounders still don't effectively substitute for actual randomizatio…

Yes think the replication crisis makes it pretty clear that even with all the fancy software, we still can't remove confounders today (and probably never will).

You can pretty safely translate we removed confounders to: we slightly cooked the data and got this significant result.

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