Are Age Spots Inevitable? And What Do They Mean For Skin Health?

We’ll file this one under “life hacks” as we will address reducing them too!

First though, what are they? Also called liver spots, they’re yellow-brown (depending on intensity) marks in the skin that typically come with age.

You may be wondering: is it about liver health? And the answer is: no

In fact they have nothing to do with liver function, except insofar as a diseased liver will promote metabolic problems in general more rapid aging, but that is systemic, and is no more reasonably considerable a matter of liver function than graying hair or arthritis.

Liver health is very important for many things, though so do also check out: How To Unfatty A Fatty Liver

As for “liver spots”, however, the name comes from color, and that once upon a time it was popularly believed that they were connected, but there is no scientific basis to that.

What, then, does cause them?

As our cells age, they start bringing forward mistakes that accumulate over time, like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy.

One common mistake is to bring forward senescent fibroblasts, whose non-senescent versions are supposed to be there, but whose senescent editions contain more melanin than average (as in, average for your normal skintone) which consequently also gets brought forward and with no reason to disappear, also accumulates over time.

You may be wondering: is this related to cancer? And the answer is: yes and no

More helpfully: it’s a somewhat similar process, but benign (in contrast to cancer cells that would be similar, but multiply rapidly as they divide without any programmed cell death).

However, since they can look a lot like skin cancer, that also means that they can mask skin cancer. For this reason, get it checked if what you have assumed to be an age spot…

• turns black
• turns multicolored
• gets bigger
• bleeds (for a reason other than: you just stabbed it with something)

Any one (or more) of those happening is cause for concern. Note, we say cause for concern, not cause for panic; it will quite possibly be fine, but it also might not be, so book yourself a doctor visit about it.

Learn more: We don’t all need regular skin cancer screening–but you can know your risk and check yourself

The other major factor besides simply “how many times your cells have been copied” is sun exposure, because UV radiation not only can cause cellular mutations in the long-run, but also cues our skin to speed up melanin production (it’s trying to save us by giving us darker skin*).

*Note: dark skin is moderately protective against sun damage (and resultant cancer risk) initially, but this is a double-edged sword, so please do still wear sunscreen even if you have naturally dark skin! Darker-skinned people who do get skin cancer have higher mortality rates than people with lighter skin (even if the same race/ethnicity and just lighter- or darker-skinned)—at least in part because it will then spread more aggressively. Simply put: dark skin will stop a lot of skin cancers from starting, but the cancers that do get past that initial hurdle are, on average, much worse.

How, then, to reduce them?

In advance:

• Wear sunscreen, and consider doing so even if it’s not very sunny; see: Do We Need Sunscreen In Winter, Really? ← the answer here isn’t a simple yes/no, so do read the article, as there is nuance that can help you decide when it’s worth it and when it’s not
• Kill your senescent cells at the earliest opportunity. That might sound drastic, but here be science: Fisetin: The Anti-Aging Assassin
• And as an encore: The Drug & Supplement Combo That Reverses Aging ← this is about dasatinib and quercetin, or else fisetin alone, and explores some very related science

After they show up:

• The same things as above; they will slow any exacerbation, and killing senescent cells does work retroactively too, per that (justified) “reverses aging” claim.
• Normal anti-aging skincare: here we’re talking things like: Undo The Sun’s Damage To Your Skin
• Laser treatment: or an at-home IPL device which is not technically laser but works on the same principles; it breaks up the pigment and allows your immune system to eat the resultant parts. However, this is only suitable for small, moderate pigmented spots, and only on skin that is notably lighter than it (or else it’ll superheat the natural pigmentation there, too, which means much more heat will be absorbed, creating a burn risk)

There are also harsher clinical options like cryotherapy (freezing it off) or chemical peels (corrosively removing the affected skin), and… Well, we’re not the boss of you, but we would encourage you to consider whether that’s really worth it for something that’s not harmful in itself, and will probably be a losing battle in the long run—since, if we be so fortunate as to live many more years, we’ll accumulate more as we go no matter how careful we are.

Want to tackle things the tastiest way?

Check out:

The Diet That Slows Skin Aging

Enjoy!