You Fix Your Face, But Science Says They're Smelling Your Age.

Most people think dry skin is the main sign of getting older. A 2024 study found something surprising: the natural scents your skin gives off tell your true age more clearly than how dry or moist it is.

What the researchers did

Figure 2. Collection of volatile compounds from the skin using solid-phase microextraction (SPME). Source: Finnegan et al. (2024).

Scientists studied 60 healthy people, ages 18 to 78. They gently collected the natural scent compounds coming off each person's skin, without touching or disturbing it. They also checked two things doctors normally look at when judging skin age: oiliness/dryness level and skin's natural balance (called pH).

What they found

Figure 3. Six of the 18 measured skin volatile compounds changed with age—five increased and one decreased. Illustration based on findings from Finnegan et al. (2024).

Out of 18 natural skin scents they measured, 6 changed clearly as people got older. Most increased with age, one decreased, and one in particular rose with age in both men and women.

When researchers combined these 6 scents together, they could guess a person's age correctly about 68% of the time. That's a much better guess than using dryness or skin balance alone.

Why this happens

As we age, our skin naturally goes through more wear and tear inside, which creates these scent compounds as a by-product. Think of it like a car that's been driven for years; it naturally shows small signs of age that a fresh coat of paint (moisturizer) can't hide.

Why this matters

Moisturizer treats the surface. But this study is a reminder that skin aging really happens underneath, in ways we can't always see or feel. That's why more skincare research is now looking past surface moisture and toward what's really happening inside the skin as it ages. This is part of why we formulated our Persimmon Soap around Japanese kaki tannin, a traditional ingredient used for generations to help neutralize these same kinds of age-related scent compounds at the source, rather than just masking them.

The takeaway

Keeping skin hydrated is still good for comfort and appearance. But the deeper story of skin aging is happening below the surface, in the natural compounds our body produces as we get older. That's the part worth understanding, and the part that matters most long term. If you want to address that deeper, age-related scent naturally, our Persimmon Soap is built specifically around this idea, targeting the compounds themselves, not just covering them up.

 

Reference

Finnegan, M., Fitzgerald, S., Duroux, R., Attia, J., Markey, E., O’Connor, D., & Morrin, A. (2024). Predicting chronological age via the skin volatile profile. Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, 35(3), 421–432. https://doi.org/10.1021/jasms.3c00315