The Truth About Cellulite
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| The following is an excerpt from Beautiful Skin: Every Woman's Guide To Looking Her Best At Any Age by David E. Band, M.D. and Estelle Sobel, Adams Media Corporation © 2000. Used with permission. All rights reserved. |
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It is an ugly fact of life for 90 percent of women: Cellulite, those unsightly fatty deposits also known as orange-peel skin. More than just ordinary fat, cellulite is a specific combination of fat, waste, and water that forms a bumpy, rippled mass that gets trapped in the fibrous, connective tissue just below the skin's surface. Cellulite appears most commonly on the hips, thighs, and buttocks, but it can show up on the arms, abdomen, and upper back as well.
What Causes Cellulite?
Several factors contribute to cellulite, including diet as well as a sluggish blood and lymphatic circulation, which allows wastes to accumulate. But three contributing agents determine whether you develop cellulite: heredity, estrogen, and fat. If just one of those ingredients is missing, you don't have cellulite, just plain ordinary fat.
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You usually inherit cellulite, that is, if your mom has it -- and by "it" we mean loose connective tissue, which fat globules pop up through -- chances are you do or will too, even if you're thin. As connective tissue weakens with age, the dimpling becomes even more pronounced. If you have thin skin, which is also hereditary, cellulite is even easier to see than it is on thicker skin. If your mother has cellulite, you've probably inherited her loosely woven connective tissue and poor lymphatic drainage, which leads to bunched-up fat cells. And as you now know, cellulite is more than just fat: It's fat trapped by a network of connective tissue fibers. If the underlying network is loosely woven, the fat bulges through the fibers, causing a "cottage cheese" effect on the skin. As connective tissue weakens with age, the dimpling becomes even more pronounced.
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The fibers that extend from the muscle up through the fat and connect to the undersurface of the skin run directly up and down, perpendicularly, at a 90-degree angle, which allows bulging and puckering. In men, the fibers I mentioned run in a crisscross, at a 45-degree angle, so the fat is less likely to bulge up like it does in women.
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The Estrogen Factor
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Once women reach puberty, the body's ovaries begin to produce the hormone estrogen, which helps to store fat in the hips, thighs, and buttocks, in preparation for childbearing. We can also thank estrogen for adding to cellulite's puckered appearance: It makes fat cells sticky, so they bunch together like grapes, contributing to the appearance of cellulite.
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| Diet plays only a small role in curbing cellulite, because cellulite is basically a genetic, hormonal, and anatomic problem. Dieting can help, especially if you are overweight, but it definitely won't totally solve the problem. In fact, some anorexic women have cellulite. Some overweight women don't show it at all. |
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