Fine lines on the forehead and around the eyes: collagen, estrogen and water

Lines that were only there when you squinted are there when you are not. A forehead that used to settle flat by mid-morning keeps its creases. This is usually the first thing women notice in perimenopause, and it is usually blamed on age. Age is a slow process; what happened here was faster than age, and estrogen explains the speed.

Collagen gives skin its structure, and estrogen keeps collagen production up

Dermal fibroblasts make collagen, and fibroblasts carry estrogen receptors.¹ When estrogen signals them, they make more; when it falls away, they make less and the existing collagen is lost faster than it is replaced.^1,2 Skin becomes thinner, with less collagen, lower elasticity and more wrinkling.¹

The scale is well measured. Studies of skin samples from postmenopausal women found that collagen falls by as much as 30% in the first five years after menopause.^1,3 The American Academy of Dermatology puts the decline after that at about 2% a year for the next twenty years.⁴ These are averages, so "about" is the honest word; the direction and the speed are not in doubt.

Why the forehead and eyes first

The skin of the upper eyelid is the thinnest on the face: an ultrasound map of 38 facial sites measured it at just over half a millimetre.⁵ The forehead and the skin around the eyes also fold with every expression, many times a day. Where the skin is thin and folds often, collagen loss shows first: the fold stays, as a line. Thicker skin elsewhere on the face takes longer to show the same loss.

Water is part of the picture

Estrogen also supports skin hydration. As it declines, skin becomes drier,¹ and a dehydrated surface makes fine lines read deeper than they are. This is why lines look worse on a dry morning and softer after a humid day, and why hydration changes the look of fine lines quickly even though it changes nothing underneath.

Put together

"Fine lines on my forehead and around my eyes" is collagen leaving faster than it is replaced, as the estrogen signal to fibroblasts fades, showing first where skin is thinnest and moves most, and amplified by surface dehydration.

What this means for a routine

Two things change the look of fine lines: water in the surface, which works within days, and support for the look of firmness over weeks. Cōpḍī's Plump carries biomimetic peptides, growth factors made in plants and carried in oleosomes, with an amino-acid complex, which support the look of firmness and smooth the look of fine lines; both formulas carry five molecular weights of hyaluronic acid with snow mushroom and polyglutamic acid, which plump the look of skin. There is no retinol in either formula, so there is no ramp-up or adjustment period.