What causes liver spots? Despite their name, liver spots are caused by prolonged exposure to Ultra ultraviolet light and don’t have anything to do with the liver.
As people age, they get more wrinkles, their muscles don’t work quite as well, and they get dark brown blemishes on their skin. These spots are called liver spots and are one of the signs of aging. They don’t actually have any connection to the liver. The expression was first used in 1684. Because of their color and the fact that they appear later in life, led people to believe that they were caused by a problem with the liver. They are usually dark, the color of blood, and making a connection between them and the liver would be easy to do.
Liver spots are caused by ultraviolet light, which we are exposed to every day when we go out in the sunlight. You can tell that they are caused by the sunlight because they only appear in areas that are exposed to sunlight. These are the face, the hands, the arms, and the top of the head if you are bald. Liver disease can cause blotches on the skin, but these are not connected to liver spots. Liver diseases, such as cirrhosis, can upset the body’s hormone balance, and it can lead to skin marks, which is called hyperpigmentation.
We are bombarded with UV light all day long, and it causes damage to our skin. UV light is a slightly higher energy band of light than the visible light that we can see. Because it is carrying more energy, it can do more damage. There are three types of UV light: A, B, and C, divided up by the amount of energy they have. The most dangerous type is luckily blocked by the atmosphere. If that weren’t the case, life probably wouldn’t have evolved on Earth. The middle type, B, does the most damage, and it causes sunburn and can cause skin cancer. It also causes liver spots. UV light is absorbed by the skin, and it damages the cells. Up to about the age of 40, the damage is repaired as quickly as it happens. After the age of 40, the body can’t keep up, and the damage isn’t always fixed.
When our skin cells are hit with UV light, they produce melanin. Melanin is a dark pigment, and it can absorb the UV light that would do more damage to your body if it could pass through. We produce more melanin if there is more UV light. People who live in sunnier climates, closer to the equator, where there is more UV light, have more melanin in their skin than people who live in the north, where there is less sunlight. In the summer, we produce more melanin to cope with the increased sunlight, which is why people tan in the summer.
When we are young, our skin constantly regenerates. The outer layers die, and new layers are created underneath and then gradually pushed upwards. Any excess melanin that is in the skin will slowly be pushed up with the new skin, and then it will slough off when the skin dies. In this way, our skin gets rid of the excess melanin. That is why your beautiful suntan doesn’t last that long, and if you want to stay brown, you either have to live at the equator or spend a fortune on tanning beds. As we get older, our skin loses its ability to perfectly regenerate. It obviously still can, but not as effectively. Excess melanin is usually pushed upwards and out, but not always. In some cases, it can start to build up and clump together. These areas are liver spots. People who spend more time in the sun, or more time on tanning beds, may end up with more liver spots than people who don’t.
Liver spots are completely harmless, but some people don’t like them because of the way they look. They are associated with aging, and some people want to remove them. There are several ways to do that. You can use creams that you can buy in the drugstore. These creams don’t remove the liver spots; they lighten them by using chemicals that inhibit the melanin and encourage new skin to grow. You can get a chemical peel, which kills the outer layer of skin so that it can be peeled off, taking the liver spot with it. Liver spots usually go deeper than that layer, but this might lighten them. You can also have liver spots frozen, which kills the cells that produce melanin, but it is painful. You can have them scrubbed off with something abrasive. And you can have them removed with lasers. This is the most successful, but the most expensive. And this is what I learned today.
Sources
https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/001141.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liver_spot
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/cirrhosis/
https://www.oed.com/dictionary/liver-spot_n?tl=true
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/10985-ultraviolet-radiation
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21723-liver-spots
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/22615-melanin
Photo by Vlada Karpovich: https://www.pexels.com/photo/elderly-couple-hugging-each-other-5790836/