What your skin and hair are telling you about your health

There’s a moment many women experience, the one where we catch our reflection and feel like something shifted when we weren’t looking. Our skin seemingly changed overnight or our ponytail feels thinner. While most of us aren’t concerned with looking 25 again, we do want to feel vital. We want our bodies to function well, and perhaps most importantly, we want to understand the biology of what’s happening well enough to make good decisions.

Skin is our bodies largest organ, and it’s constantly in communication with the rest of our biology, which means it should absolutely be a part of any health or longevity conversation. For better or worse, what’s happening with our skin is often a window into our health and longevity at a greater scale.

🪞Curious about peptides and your skin? Here’s what the research really says.

Both Dr. Carolina Reis Oliveira and Dr. Isabelle Raymond are speaking at the Livelong Women’s Health Summit this April. Join 75+ leading voices for two days of evidence-based conversations on women’s health, longevity, hormones, and more.

Livelong Women’s Health Summit | April 17–18, San Francisco

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“Your chronological age is just how many years you’ve been alive. Your biological age is how well your cells are actually functioning, and those two numbers don’t have to match,” says Carolina Reis Oliveira, PhD, co-founder and CEO of OneSkin. “In skin, we measure biological age using epigenetic clocks, which look at methylation patterns on your DNA.”

Increasingly, research suggests that skin's biological age may be a window into what’s happening systemically.

At the root of accelerated skin aging is a process called cellular senescence. “Think of senescent cells as a rotten orange in a basket of good oranges,” says Reis Oliveira. “They’re not dividing, not functioning properly, but they’re not dying either, and while they’re sitting there, they’re releasing a cocktail of inflammatory signals.”

In skin, that inflammatory environment breaks down collagen and elastin, impairs wound healing, and compromises the skin barrier. As we age, the body becomes less efficient at clearing these cells, so they accumulate, inflammation builds, and tissue deterioration accelerates.

“Studies suggest women can lose up to 30% of their skin’s collagen in the first five years after menopause,” says Reis Oliveira. “It’s not that aging is happening to you faster. It’s that the protective mechanisms are being withdrawn.”

“Estrogen plays an important role in healthy hair growth by helping keep follicles in the growth phase,” says Dr. Isabelle Raymond, PhD, SVP of Global Medical and Clinical Affairs at Nutrafol. “During perimenopause and menopause, declining estrogen and progesterone can shorten that growth phase. Lower estrogen also shifts the hormonal balance, increasing the relative influence of androgens like DHT, which can lead to follicular miniaturization in some women.”

Hair follicles sit within the dermis and depend on a collagen-rich environment for structure and nourishment. When collagen declines, in skin and in the follicle matrix, the effects show up in both places.

“Hair thinning is typically visible well before 50% of hair is gone, but many people don’t recognize or act on it until thinning is more advanced,” says Raymond. Early signs include a widening part, reduced ponytail volume, increased daily shedding, and weaker strands.

For skin, the same early-action principle applies. “When you understand what’s happening, that collagen production slows, that senescent cells accumulate, that hormonal shifts change the cellular environment, you stop chasing quick fixes and start making decisions that actually work with your body,” says Reis Oliveira.

Unfortunately, this industry has built itself on short-term promises, but that’s not how biology works, says Reis Oliveira. “Real changes in the biology of skin take time. You can expect to start seeing meaningful results at six to twelve weeks, with improvements continuing to build at six months and twelve months.”

For skin, Reis Oliveira identifies sunscreen as the most evidence-based intervention, followed by retinoids (with caveats regarding dosing and individual tolerance). Lifestyle factors such as sleep, stress, and metabolic health, also shape the cellular environment in meaningful ways. And then at the frontier, you have peptide science, which designs molecules that target key drivers of aging at the cellular level.

For hair, Raymond emphasizes acting early and starting a conversation with a board-certified dermatologist. Hair changes are often one of the first visible signs of internal shifts during menopause, making them worth taking seriously rather than normalizing.

Both experts point to the same principle, though. The goal isn’t to fight aging, it’s to support the biology through it.

In case you missed it, we hosted Dr. Stacy Sims for a conversation on exercise and nutrition last week. Members of the Livelong Women’s Circle can watch the replay here.

This week on Friday, we’ll be joined by Dr. Vonda Wright to talk about what it actually takes to stay strong, mobile, and independent as you age. We’d love to have you join us!

👉 More details and RSVP

👉If you're passionate about women's health, we'd love to have you join our Ambassador program for the Summit — see the details here.

👉If your work supports women's long-term health, we're welcoming vendors and partners for the Summit — view the media kit.

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