Unprecedented achievement of receiving awards in four consecutive congresses. Elucidation of the cause of sagging,
which leads to aging of the appearance

As a pioneer in the research on sagging, Shiseido has conducted research to elucidate the mechanism of sagging and the development of solutions for many years. Innovative findings in this research led to the awarding of the top award at the IFSCC three times up to 2018. Since then, the research has continued to evolve in order to elucidate the full picture of sagging, which is a complex intertwining of a variety of different factors, and achieved 4 consecutive top award wins at the 2020 Congress in Yokohama. Our challenge in this research was gravity as the root cause of sagging.

Although most people are unaware of gravity in their daily lives, many people would agree that sagging is caused by the drooping of the skin as we lose the ability to resist gravity with age. While gravity is identified as a major contributing factor in sagging, the relationship between sagging and gravity has not been elucidated.
This research involves the development of 4D-digital skin, which allows skin deformation to be reproduced in detail on the computer to the inside of the skin, to elucidate the anti-gravity system that enables skin to resist gravity, as well as the cause of this system to be lost and lead to sagging.

We used our newly developed 4D analysis technology to examine the movement inside the skin when uniform force was applied. As a result, we found that the deformation of the skin does not occur uniformly (Figure 1). The areas shown in red have a greater amount of deformation, whereas the blue areas show the resistance to deformation. When we looked closely at the blue areas, which was thought to be the clues to the anti-gravity system, we discovered that it was where the hair muscles (the arrector pili muscles) were present (Figure 2).
The hair muscle is a small muscle connecting the hair to the skin surface; it contracts in response to stimuli, such as cold weather and emotion, and is the muscle that exerts a great power at times in causing the hairs to stand on end.

When the movement of the hair muscles was observed while pressing the skin, some of these muscles were found to be locking and holding the skin surface to prevent the deformation of the skin. Also, hair muscles which are present at a high density in the face, were found to be aligned in a single direction to resist gravity (Figure 3). Since the great force of the hair muscles was to support the skin to prevent deformation, this was identified as the anti-gravity system that we were looking for. Shiseido termed these groups of hair muscles the “Dynamic Belt” (Figure 4).

Shiseido discovered many innovative findings in the research on sagging up to present. In the future, we will further evolve the research on these findings under a specialized category named “Anti-gravity Science V” and aim to apply these findings to new beauty care.