Are they folds, wrinkles, or lines?
Please read this to make up your mind; Your skin is folded and refolded.

A fold starts out as a groove in your skin, an inward indentation with very few consequences.
However, you repeat the movements and expressions that cause them to appear so often, that some folds become permanently inlaid in your skin.
This has serious repercussions on many components of the skin, as well as on everything beneath it.

Skin is a multi-layered tissue containing a large number of living constituents that are essential to your well-being such as: sweat glands, hair follicles, sebum glands, specialized receptors for pain, touch, temperature, vibration, ....
Every region of your skin is irrigated and innervated by a complex system of branching blood vessels and free nerve endings.

Skin is flexible and extensible; it folds easily.
This suppleness is essential, because the skin covers articulated parts of the body where it gets stretched, compressed and creased.
It has to fold.

Even if the folds are a normal phenomenon, they degrade the skin.
Occasional folds become permanent ones, because the skin protects itself from tearing.
Strips of skin stay imprisoned inside the folds, and this situation cannot be considered healthy.

Both sides of the fold become walls, facing each other.
Some sebum glands, hair follicles, and sweat glands stay trapped inside the fold. The fold is held together by coats of living epidermis cells, created in a process called superficial cicatrisation, that is designed to prevent further damage to the skin.

Your skin can endure a lot of folding without damage.
But, when the folding occurs in the same places, over and over, day after day, due to your repetitive movements; your skin can't take it anymore.
It reacts with superficial cicatrisation.

If your skin was folded only occasionally, of course no damage would occur.
But think of how often you wink, swallow, talk, or eat, and you’ll understand that folding poses a real challenge to your skin.

You know the impact folding has on objects.
You probably fold some things repeatedly to separate or divide them.

How damaging the process is depends on;
• The rigidity and elasticity of the folded material,
• How long you do it,
• At what speed,
• What vigor is applied,
• ...

While the repeated folding is occurring, the worst damage is concentrated all along the path of the fold, on its floor.
In response, the skin covers the bottom of the fold with a coat of fresh epidermis cells, to prevent any tearing.

Over time, superficial cicatrisation will come into action several times on the same fold.
This creates the formation of multiple layers of stacked epidermal cells, as well as the burying of the fold.
The fold is held together for life, it is permanent.

Several attributes can be used to distinguish and differentiate the folds in human skin.
Folds can be grouped according to their orientation, their depth and their angle, but mostly by their location, their progression, ...

Folds have two phases in their evolution;
1• They start out as occasional events.
They are not etched into the skin, and only appear when a movement creates them.
2• Afterwards, they continuously build up and consolidate.
They slowly solidify, deepen, harden and tighten to become permanent.

At birth, humans already have several permanent folds that have formed as a result of the fetus' activities during pregnancy.

Folds have a tendency to go for as long as they can.
For this reason, most large ones circle completely around your body.
The folds keep on going until they fall back in their own crease.
Usually, some sections of each fold are visible, but long stretches can be completely undetectable, even when looking closely.
Fortunately, the folds can be felt with your super-sensitive nails.

Circular folds with invisible sections

Most folds are caused by movements of the body.
The body is segmented, and can only be bent in specific places; at the articulations.
The skin that covers the joints is tubular.
Finger tubes, arm tubes, leg tubes, neck tube, trunk tube, ... all these tubes are vertical.
The joints only work in one way, and do not permit flexing in the opposite direction.
This means that the skin tubes are always bending on the same side.

Articulations are really problematic.
The skin covering these moving parts gets repeatedly stretched, compressed and crumpled.
Anytime you flex a joint, several folds are formed.
The skin becomes pleated, and some sections are pressed into the articulation.
When the skin becomes trapped and entangled in the mechanism, pain can occur anytime the articulation is flexed.

Due to its structure and configuration, each joint only permits flexing in a specific manner.
The extent and direction of its movement are limited.
Joints can flex freely to one side, but not on the other.
This situation results in two types of folds: one on each side of the joints.

•Stretched folds; On the outer side of the joint, where the skin stretches and expands when the limb is flexed, but is draped and hangs down when the limb is straightened.
They are small and numerous, but shallow.
•Compressed folds; On the inner side of the joint, where the skin is compressed and constrained.
They are usually few in number, but firmly taut and deep.

These two types of folds meet at the sides, becoming circular horizontal folds.

Folds can also be differentiated by their depth, so you will find:
•Complete folds; where the whole skin, epidermis, dermis and hypodermis, is completely folded back on itself.
Many complete folds are formed early in the life of an individual, when the skin is still supple and thin, but they continue to develop until death.
Complete folds start out as surface folds.
•Surface folds; also called wrinkles, where shallow and small grooves only bend the top of the skin.
They proliferate by creating lines between your existing fold crossings.

Most folds aren't perpendicular to the skin’s surface.
Their path is angled because one side receives more pressure.
In some cases, the walls of the fold become almost parallel to the skin’s surface.

A portion of skin remains captive in the folds.
Some hair follicles and sweat glands, which normally expel their contents to the surface, now see their exits blocked.
The nerves and blood vessels get bent and folded over, causing all kinds of problems.
But the folds, and their crossings, are most noticeable because of the pain they cause.

Cutaneous folds are the primary cause of pain throughout the body.
Pain in the shoulders, arms, hands, back, knees, feet, etc., all have the same cause: skin folds.
However, the pain is mostly concentrated in the places where two folds meet; the folds crossings.

● More on cutaneous folds and pain.

Cutaneous folds bend the nerves that pass beneath them, and weaken the signal transmitted to the brain.
Each nerve travels from a specific part of your body to your brain.
However, along the way, they are susceptible to being bent, compressed or pinched by the folds in the skin.
When the strength of the signal the nerves transmit is diminished, you slowly lose contact with some body parts or functions.

● More on cutaneous folds and loss of sensitivity.

Cutaneous folds bend, compress and strangle the blood vessels and veins beneath them.
They are the main cause of high blood pressure (hypertension), and reduced blood circulation.
Folds are often the source of blocked blood vessels and arteries (atherosclerosis), numbness and tingling (paresthesia), varicose veins, and more.

● More on cutaneous folds and blood circulation.

When you see aged skin, you see folded skin.
In fact, the folds are responsible for some of the most bothersome aspects of aging, such as chronic pain, loss of mobility, circulatory problems, loss of sensation, unattractiveness, ...

● More on cutaneous folds and aging.

Ugliness is not a health problem, but it can have a negative impact on someone's social and sexual integration.
Folded skin is ugly.
The more a skin is folded, the uglier it is.

● More on cutaneous folds and beauty.

Cellulite is characterized by visible patterns of bumps and lines on the skin.
Obviously, these lines are caused by deep folds.
Cellulite can be groomed away with pressure strokes.

Stretch marks, also called «Striae», are simply folds that are pulled open by the rapid growth of a body part, usually due to puberty, pregnancy, muscle building, weight gain, ...
Normally, they would be kept closed by the epidermis that forms inside each one to protect the skin from tearing.
When a sudden growth happens, the skin becomes so stretched that the tension opens some of the folds.
Since part of their protective hardness is removed, they feel soft.

Stretch marks can often be observed as parallel grooves in the skin.
This parallelism, as well as their generally vertical orientation, only validate the fact that they are folds.
Stretch marks can be groomed away using pressure strokes.

Folds hamper blood circulation.
When the skin is folded, the blood vessels within it are also folded; they are flattened and crushed.
Their passages become constricted, and the blood can't flow normally.
At the point where the folding occurs, the veins widen because the blood can no longer flow.
The blockage causes the formation of a reservoir of blood that can be unattractive.
Use pressure strokes on the folds next to the blood pools to free the veins.