The signals that the skin gives us when there is a psychophysical imbalance

“We need four hugs a day to stay sane, eight hugs a day to stay healthy and twelve hugs a day to really grow”, a psychotherapist’s statement Virginia Satir which today resounds like a prophecy.

Because never as during this pandemic period have we realized the importance of contact, of the warmth of the skin on the skin. Because it is never just a hug, a caress, a touch: with the skin we communicate, capture, understand, transmit sensations.

Nowadays we talk intensively about the importance of having beautiful skin, reducing everything to just one aesthetic factor. But having a well-groomed and healthy skin is also essential to better understand the world around us. In fact, the skin is an active container, which allows us to discover who we are and who the others are.

Suffice it to say that the intuition that without contact life is not possible dates back to the Middle Ages: the observations on the consequences of tactile deprivation in children have revealed how crucial it is to hug, caress and touch. And today we have tried it on our skin, it is appropriate to say it.

The skin is not only our external covering, it is the mirror of our inner experiences, and it can often communicate more and better than words. Just to better understand how it works and its language, it has just been released in the bookstore “The skin knows. The importance of touch from the womb to virtual reality “, published by Mondadori and co-written by the doctor Alessandro Martella and the doctor Federica Osti, both specialized in Dermatology and Venereology and consultants for Myshkin.

A journey into the largest organ of our body, in which the authors show us how it works even without our knowledge, what can damage it and what can heal it; without forgetting that sometimes it is not enough to cure the symptom, you have to go to the root. Pimples, dermatitis, itching, rashes they can be signs to be grasped, as well as pathologies to be treated.

Body and mind they are closely connected and the skin often connects one to the other. In addition to this, it tells our story, as it keeps imprinted not only on the signs of time and life, such as wrinkles, stretch marks and scars, but also those we have chosen, such as piercings and tattoos. For this reason, we must never underestimate this organ which has a fundamental role in our life. We cannot ignore it, nor live without it. We are the skin.

To understand it better, we talked about it with Dr. Martella and Dr. Osti: this is what we discovered, but above all understood.

We explain the skin in simple terms, because we often take it for granted, but it is one of the most important and extensive organs in the human body.

“Without skin there would be no life. Not only because the skin is a barrier, an armor that protects us from the insults of the outside world, but because it is the first sense and organ of communication we have.

When we talk about the skin, it is often thought that it is something superficial, but in reality there is a wonderful world in our skin. The ability to keep the body temperature always the same despite changes in external temperature? We have to thank the skin with his sweating. Defense against viruses, bacteria and other aggressive microorganisms? Thanks to our skin that performs a valuable barrier action. The possibility of moving, running, keeping a new life in our womb? Thanks to the skin and its elasticity that follows us in our every evolution or bodily change.

But not only. Through the skin we come into contact with the outside world and we get to know it, exchanging a lot of information. If we close our eyes right now, we know exactly where all parts of our body are, even though we can’t see them. It is our skin with its nerve sensors that allows us to do this.

The sense of safety and security that we feel as children in the arms of the mother? It is our skin, thanks to the touch and the hormones it induces the secretion of which allows us to feel this way. The thrill of pleasure we feel when we touch our loved one or are touched? Always thanks to our skin. Our skin is our deepest self. You can’t live without her. “

The skin speaks to us, the skin remembers: what does this mean?

«Knowing how to listen, notice, observe i signals that the skin sends us can be a valid tool to keep us healthy as well as to understand if the cosmetic practices we are implementing are the most correct for us.

A dry skin, which pulls and sends back annoying sensations can be a sign of generalized dehydration. The color of the skin can give information on the state of health, let’s think of the idioms: “it was all white and pink” is an image that evokes health. Instead, “you are livid with anger” is a phrase that refers to a specific emotional state in which the skin, due to the stress hormones, undergoes a vasoconstriction. “It’s white as a rag” is a sign of malaise, especially anemia. As well as the appearance of some manifestations such as pimples rather than spots on the skin, it can be a sign of hormonal alterations.

Furthermore the skin remembers. Remember that contact with a specific substance in the past has not made us feel good, and it tells us this by turning on red lights that itch. It remembers that we have had rapid growth or that we have carried a life in our womb, and it remains crossed by vertical marks that we call stretch marks. Remember that time we fell out of the tree as children, or had that surgery, or that we slept with a fever instead of going to school that year of chickenpox, because it’s scarred. ‘

Psyche and soma are closely related: if we are not well in our minds, this reverberates in the body. How can the skin manifest a psychological discomfort?

«Skin and nervous system they are two brothers separated at birth who seek each other for the rest of their lives. The close relationship between these organs arises when we are still embryos inside the maternal womb. The skin and the peripheral nervous system both derive from a single embryonic sheet which is called the neuroectoderm. Therefore any skin alteration also has implications related to sensations (itching, burning, tingling), but the opposite is also true.

A stressful period, a bereavement, a sudden change in our life perhaps not desired, also affects a whole series of hormones called “stress” which, once released into the bloodstream, reach the skin, making it drier, more sensitive, easily reddened, up to developing real diseases such as acne, dermatitis or psoriasis. The alterations of the normal night’s rest also affect the skin, making it thinner, more irritable, scarred and predisposing it to premature aging ».

Why is touch such an important sense? What do we understand through the skin? What brain is behind it?

«Without touch we could not live, it is the first sense organ that develops after a few weeks of gestation. Since the beginning, our ancestors have known the world thanks to the touch, with which they learned to recognize what could be dangerous, for example a prickly shrub, with the smooth surface of a bed on which to sit or lie down to rest. Touch is our first organ of relationship with others, just think of the caresses between the mother and her child, and it is what builds our identity by distinguishing it from everything outside of us.

Touch is life, it is relationship with others and with the world and continuously generates tactile experiences, even when we do not notice it, such as when we are sitting or standing and a myriad of information from our skin leaves in the direction of the brain to communicate our posture and reflex to maintain balance ».

Let’s talk about sex, skin and orgasm: how does pleasure affect the health of the skin? And why?

“When we think of our skin, we don’t have to make the mistake of imagining it as an inert coating, because instead it is more like a rich platform, very rich in sensors and interconnected with the brain.

It all starts from our skin and it all comes to our skin. Think for example of the stimulation of an object that we describe as pleasant, the synthesis of a myriad of individual information on physical characteristics such as, for example, it is smooth, it is warm, it is soft … fused together by our brain into a single piece of information: the adjective enjoyable. It is such a relevant mechanism that the same adjectives we use to describe the physical world around us and in which we live we also use them to describe people: he is a pleasant person, he is a touching person …

Everything starts from the skin, referring to the stimulations that our skin is able to grasp and convey to the brain and everything arrives at the skin as a feedback feedback. Think for example of a return response such as goosebumps. Or when we touch, or just touch, the skin of the person we love or with whom we are in love and then we blush. It is surprising to think that even after, after some time, the mere memory of the lived experience is able to make us blush again.

All this in theorgasm obviously it is amplified because to the physical involvement, to the heat and to the contact between the bodies, there is at the same time the emotional involvement, a complicity and a synergy that creates an explosion of well-being ».

What are the signs that should not be underestimated to understand that there is a psychophysical imbalance? For example, what does a pimple, a wrinkle, a dermatitis tell us?

«In general, it is not a single manifestation that indicates the presence of a psychophysical imbalance, but the observation and evaluation of the person as a whole. Let’s take for example theacne, chronic inflammatory disease very common during puberty that affects up to 90% of adolescents, where the presence of pimples is not an indicator of discomfort, but the simultaneous presence of wounds on the face where the pimples are present.
In these cases, the discomfort due to the presence of pimples can be mild, what really needs to be investigated are the abrasions and bruises, caused by repeatedly scratching or making them burst. The rejection of the pathology more than the pathology itself is the indicator to be investigated ».

In our gallery, you will find the allies of the skin: from cosmetics to meditation, through to orgasm, everything that is good and makes our skin shine again.