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What is Elastin?

Take a moment to imagine the many shapes your face makes throughout the day—furrowing your brows as you read through the daily news, scrunching your lips for a kiss, squinting your eyes as you laugh during a sun-soaked brunch. Your face creates a whole range of dynamic expressions for every moment of the day. That’s largely because elastin, an essential protein found in skin, cartilage, and connective tissues, allows skin and ligaments to stretch and snap back into shape.

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 The Anti-Ageing Hero Nobody Talks About

While most of our skin is made up from collagen, elastin is only present at about 2 to 4% of the total protein in your skin. However, it is of critical importance if we want to stay youthful. That “crumple zone” around your eye when you smile - that's a change in your skin's elastin. Whilst we can't make any more of it - we’re given what we're given - we can protect it. A good way to think about elastin is to imagine your favourite lycra dresses which over time loses its ping. That's because the lycra stretches and distorts with wear and tear. So too the elastin in your skin. Over time, the environment takes its toll. It ages intrinsically, due to the generation of free radicals. But more critically, environmental UVA plays a really big part in changing our skin's elastin. The result is skin that just won't snap back.

 We asked the experts, what’s the deal with elastin?

What do you really know about elastin? It’s generally mentioned in passing as collagen’s help mate – the ketchup to your fries so to speak. But while these two proteins work together and are both needed in equal measure to form the foundation of our skins structure - they have totally different jobs. Collagen offers structure, support, and strength and “elastin works as a spring and is what gives your skin its stretch allowing it to maintain a smooth texture and ward off wrinkling and sagging of the skin.

Articles of Interest

Clinical Relevance of Elastin in the Structure and Function of Skin

Elastin is the main component of elastic fibers, which provide stretch, recoil, and elasticity to the skin. Normal levels of elastic fiber production, organization, and integration with other cutaneous extracellular matrix proteins, proteoglycans, and glycosaminoglycans are integral to maintaining healthy skin structure, function, and youthful appearance. Although elastin has very low turnover, its production decreases after individuals reach maturity and it is susceptible to damage from many factors.

Collagen & Elastin: Working Together for Healthy Skin

What is that makes healthy skin, well, healthy? There are two key proteins that play a large role: collagen and elastin. While recent years have seen an uptick in collagen interest, most people don’t know how important natural collagen and elastin are to our skin. Youthful, healthy skin is full of these critical proteins; they are responsible for the elasticity and structure that keeps the surface of our bodies from sagging and stretching.

Collagen And Elastin: What Role Do They Play In Skin Longevity?

While collagen and elastin are both structural proteins, the greatest difference between the two is the properties they bring to the structure of tissues. Without collagen, skin would have minimal strength behind it and would be far too weak to withstand environmental stressors, even if it was highly flexible. Similarly, without elastin, the skin would lack elasticity and the ability to return to its previous shape, resulting in skin that sags and is easily damaged. Collagen and elastin, despite their differences, are needed in tandem to preserve the health of your skin.

Elastin 101: What You Need to Know about Elastin and Collagen Fibers

Elastin is a protein found in the skin, lungs, intestines and blood vessels that enables that tissue to s-t-r-e-t-c-h and snap back. Elastin is often compared to a rubber band because of this ability to expand, retract, and retain its shape. What happens to elastin fibers in skin as we age Like an elastic waistband in a favorite pair of sweatpants, elastin fibers will loosen and weaken over time. Some elastin degradation occurs naturally, because of intrinsic aging. But UV exposure, pollution, smoking, and even a poor diet can all accelerate the breakdown of elastin fibers.

Elastin is Skincare’s Best-Kept Beauty Secret

Elastin is stepping out of collagen’s shadow and into the spotlight as the high-priority protein skin craves. True to its name, elastin is a highly elastic bundle of amino acids that allows organs and tissues found in skin and the lining of lungs, blood vessels, the bladder and uterus to stretch, expand and recoil without snapping. This protein contortionist is 1,000 times more flexible than collagen! Elastin is the reason why the creases and folds that face-down sleeping leaves behind fade away. But others form gradually from within.

Elastin Structure, Synthesis, Regulatory Mechanism and Relationship With Cardiovascular Diseases

Elastin is an extracellular matrix (ECM) protein responsible for the extensibility and elastic recoil of many vertebrate tissues, such as large arteries, heart valves, pulmonary tissues, skin, and certain ligaments and cartilages. Elastic fibers, which are the products of enzymatically cross-linked tropoelastin monomers and microfibrillar proteins, are composed of an insoluble polymerized elastin (ELN) core and microfibers located at the periphery

Mechanical Properties and Functions of Elastin: An Overview

Human tissues must be elastic, much like other materials that work under continuous loads without losing functionality. The elasticity of tissues is provided by elastin, a unique protein of the extracellular matrix (ECM) of mammals. Its function is to endow soft tissues with low stiffness, high and fully reversible extensibility, and efficient elastic–energy storage.

Study explains elastin's remarkable movements

Elastin is a crucial building block in our bodies – its flexibility allows skin to stretch and twist, blood vessels to expand and relax with every heartbeat, and lungs to swell and contract with each breath. But exactly how this protein-based tissue achieves this flexibility remained an unsolved question – until now. This material has a remarkable combination of flexibility and durability: elastin is one of the body’s most long-lasting component proteins, with an average survival time comparable to a human lifespan. During a person’s life, the elastin in a blood vessel, for example, will have gone through an estimated two billion cycles of pulsation.

Tips for Hanging on to Collagen and Elastin for the Long Haul

You might be wondering what the big deal is when it comes to collagen and elastin. Leslie Forrester, APRN, and our team explain that if your skin is like a trampoline, bouncing back after everything life throws at it, it’s the collagen and elastin fibers that give it that youthful bounce! But as you get older, the production of these proteins slows. As a result, your skin loses the firmness and elasticity that keeps it youthful. But don’t worry—you can do plenty to keep your skin happy and healthy for the long haul.