If they say that all human cells replace themselves every 7 years or so, why can scars remain on your body for the entire life?
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Scar tissue is mostly emergency scaffolding that’s put into place as a quick fix. It isnt made of cells, though it is slowly replaced by living cells.
Thing is, the stuff that breaks down scar tissue to allow normal cells to come and replace them can’t get to it all of the scar is dense enough. So big scars will last a long time because of this.
That’s why a lot of the time doctors will tell you you gotta stretch muscles that have been worked on in surgery after they have healed, even if it hurts. Their are also tools for breaking down scar tissue on the skin.
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It is 10 years, and scars do go away.
The only scar I have left is from a deep puncture wound I recieved on my left forearm just below the elbow, and as thick as it was it is almost gone.
First of all, human cells don’t replace themselves after 7 years. This idea is false.
We have about 50-75 trillion cells in our bodies, and there’s tons of types, each with their own life-span:
* Red blood cells – 4 months
* White cells – 1 year
* Colon cells – 4 days
* Sperm cells – 2-3 days
* Neurons – Our entire lifetime
Cells aren’t all the same age. They die and are replaced all the time, in a continual process.
There’s also the matter that scars are the consequence of open wounds. An open wound triggers a quick reaction during which the body tries to seal off the entry to prevent infection as soon as possible. That’s the most important matter, and not aesthetics.
With a larger wound, once the “crust” is formed (which is basically layers upon layers of dead cells), skin cells start filling in the gap. Some of them start on the edges of the cut, and as such will connect quite well to the unharmed cells. But part of them come up from the middle and underneath the scar, forming basically a new “batch” of skin.
The gaps need to be bridged and the imperfect connections between the edge and middle replacement skin are how scars show up.
What should trouble you is that you are literally not the same person now as you were 7 years ago 🙂
Interesting…..I had a scar from a deep cut on my left index finger knuckle from when I was like 6 years old and it disappeared by now, i’m 32.
If it works dont change or modify it.
Body changes scar cells with same scar cells so it remains same.
The cells get replaced by being ‘copied’ so when mistakes are made/created they are also copied.
This why/how ageing happens, mistakes in the system of copying and reproducing the cell are retained.
It’s a very complex system so it’s amazing it works properly at all. The minimal mistakes that happen are not surprising.
What exactly is a scar and why doesn’t the body just use normal skin instead of scar tissue to repair cuts? Is a scar a different kind of skin?
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