Stretch Marks After Weight Loss

Often after rapid weight loss, striae or stretch marks form on the skin. This is scar-like tissue that develops due to insufficient skin elasticity. To maintain skin integrity, the body forms dense connective tissue that compensates for the lack of elasticity. Most commonly, stretch marks are observed on the abdomen, buttocks, and thighs.

Why Do Stretch Marks Appear Specifically After Weight Loss?

Many patients are surprised that skin can stretch during weight loss, since body volume actually decreases. In reality, here’s what happens:

• During rapid weight loss, there is a quick reduction in volume and amount of fat deposits, and often muscle mass as well.
• Due to a number of factors that disrupt skin equilibrium (which we will discuss further), collagen content in the skin drops even faster than fat volume decreases.
• As a result, the skin essentially «outpaces» the body and becomes «too small» for the existing body dimensions, despite the fact that they are decreasing.
• Because the skin lacks elasticity, the process of stretch mark formation begins: scar tissue replaces healthy skin, forming unsightly reddish stripes.

These processes most often occur in areas where the dynamics of body volume changes are most noticeable. In most cases, this is the abdomen, waist area, as well as thighs and buttocks. Stretch marks there can form both with rapid weight gain and with swift weight loss. Moreover, even if there were no stretch marks at «peak weight,» they can appear during aggressive weight reduction.

Factors That Disrupt Skin Balance

The human body is a chemical laboratory with powerful built-in self-regulation mechanisms. When balance is disrupted, the consequences can be extremely negative. Overly aggressive weight loss is precisely one way to disrupt this balance. Here are the main risk factors:

Restriction of certain nutrients entering the body due to excessively strict dieting. «Fat-free» and «low-carb» diets are quite fashionable, resulting in undermined healthy metabolism. And along with the desired weight loss, skin condition sharply deteriorates.

Disruption of water-salt balance. Depending on the chosen diet, both dehydration (for example, with overly aggressive training without sufficient fluid intake) and excess water are possible. This leads to disruption of collagen synthesis and a number of other important substances in the epidermis and dermis.

Changes in hormonal balance. If weight is lost quickly, the body’s endocrine system does not have time to adapt and begins to «search» for a new equilibrium point. During this process, skin condition suffers.

Stress and nervous tension. People become anxious due to weight loss, as a result of which a new source of stress is added to the usual routine sources, ultimately leading to additional damage to skin condition.

Use of «prohibited techniques» during weight loss. For example, using diuretics and laxatives, which leads to more noticeable results but radically worsens health, including skin condition.

Collagen synthesis is an indicator of the body’s true state of health. And when the body’s condition deteriorates due to diets, stress, and hormonal changes, the skin also loses elasticity. The appearance of striae during weight loss is no longer just a warning bell—it’s an SOS signal transmitted by the body.

Treatment of Striae with COLLOST Collagen Injections

Since the area of scar tissue in striae is quite large, treating them requires a fairly long and persistent effort. At the same time, it is important to restore healthy metabolism, ensure adequate intake of water, salt, and all nutrients, including vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, and fats.

Injections are administered directly into the problem area, trigger the mechanism of natural regeneration, and as a result allow achieving almost complete smoothing of skin texture. Therefore, many cosmetologists consider injection collagen therapy the optimal choice for stretch marks after weight loss.