Skin. It’s the largest—and heaviest—organ of our body. It can measure more than five feet long and weigh up to eight pounds! While most of us focus on the visual condition of our skin, we often forget how critical it is to our survival. Our skin is basically a fleshy coat of armor. It shields our tissues, blood vessels, and internal organs against bacteria, extreme temperatures, and damaging sunlight—it even protects us from physical harm when we fall or get cut. But it does soooo much more than that. The skin contains a massive network of nerve endings and touch receptors that fire signals to the brain alerting us to potential dangers—and pleasures—we come in contact with. The tip of the finger alone contains approximately 2,500 nerve receptors. And you wonder why a paper cut hurts so badly…
The good news:
Lizards, worms, and starfish aren’t the only creatures that can regenerate parts of their bodies. Humans can too! While we may not be as adept at it as these little critters, our skin has an amazing ability to grow back and repair itself. The upper layers of the skin are made up of rapidly dividing cells that undergo a full regeneration cycle every twenty-seven days, giving it the power to heal itself when it gets cut, burned, or harmed. Those cells are found in the epidermis (the surface layer of our skin), in our scalp and hair follicles, in the matrix of our nails, even in the mucous membranes of the mouth and nose. These cells are the reason our hair and nails grow, our skin glows—and basically—why we look so fabulous. (And yes, we do!)
The bad news:
Most chemotherapies, even some of the new immunotherapies, are targeted to wipe out and destroy rapidly dividing cancer cells. Problem is, since these chemicals can’t determine cancer cells from healthy cells—the treatment kills ALL rapidly dividing cells in the body. That means our skin, hair, and nails take a direct hit. Hair falls out. Skin gets itchy, dry, and irritated. Nails become brittle, peel, and break. Like it’s not enough that we feel like crap—now we have to look like it, too? While some side effects are inevitable, there are easy things we can do to keep our skin healthy and in good condition. (Holla for those silver linings!)
“Baby aspirin can cause bruising,” says Dr. Donald F. Richey, a board-certified dermatologist and founder of Brighter Days, a California-based program that helps cancer patients deal with skin-related side effects of chemotherapy and radiation. “So you can just imagine what a toxic chemical can do to your body.”
He makes a good point.
The side effects of chemo and radiation are long and varied: dry skin, rashes, flushing, acnelike breakouts, itching, peeling, photosensitivity, blisters, hives, scaly patches, becoming retro-dermic (red from head to toe)—and the list goes on and on. Reactions vary from person to person and are based on the type of chemotherapy you receive, the condition your skin was in before you began treatment, and how sensitive your skin is.
I don’t know why, but I was shocked by how jacked my skin got. In many ways, I was still grappling with the reality that I had breast cancer. It was the side effects that actually forced me to acknowledge I was sick. “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt…”
“All of a sudden, around day fourteen, your oil glands shut down and you become dry, very dry and with that’s when you get skin rashes, infections, et cetera,” says Dr. Richey. “But the biggest thing is dry skin.”
If by dry skin he means resembling an armadillo girdled lizard, then yeah, that’s about right. (Google it, to see what I mean.) By my third treatment, my skin became so dry it started to shed and where I wasn’t shedding I had red, sore hivelike bumps. It didn’t get better as time went on. On the days after my chemo I would turn a sickly shade of pus green. It was NOT a good look. But I’m not a girl who settles for anything less than being fabulous—so I turned to my squad of dermatologists to figure out how to turn this ugly situation around. This is the advice I got.…
Let me guess how your beauty routine goes down each morning: You wake up, jump in a long, hot shower, exfoliate your body, shave your pits and legs, and suds up until you’re squeaky clean. After you get out, it’s a rough ’n’ tumble towel off, before finishing with a fragrant body lotion. Am I right?
That is exactly what I used to do. But as you know by now, cancer changes things—and you need to adjust your routine if you want to look and feel your best. Here’s why: The body has a love-hate relationship with water. Internally, it is key for keeping our organs, muscles, and tissues hydrated and healthy. Externally, it can be one of the harshest elements for our body to endure. Crazy, right? Too much water on the skin, hair, and nails actually has the opposite effect you would think—zapping it of necessary moisture. Drinking plenty of water is essential throughout our lives but it becomes critical when we have harmful toxins rushing through our veins. At the same time, patients need to be careful how much water they are exposing their bodies to. Stressing out an already weak system is, as I like to say, “no bueno.”
“Don’t fall into the trap of over-cleansing, over-scrubbing, and overusing everything antibacterial in order to prevent a secondary infection,” says Dr. Heidi Waldorf, director of Laser and Cosmetic Dermatology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City and founder of Waldorf Dermatology & Laser Associates in Nanuet, New York. She is also a survivor of stage IIB invasive ductal carcinoma breast cancer. “If you strip the skin, it’s going to be more open and more prone to outside environmental issues.”