The most-cited number is roughly 30% of dermal collagen lost in the first five years post-menopause, with slower ongoing loss thereafter. The primary driver is the decline in estradiol.
Brincat and colleagues at King's College Hospital established the foundational data in 1983, measuring skin collagen content in postmenopausal women and finding that dermal collagen content correlates directly with time since menopause (Brincat, 1983). Subsequent work refined the shape of that curve: the steepest loss occurs in the first five years, and continues at roughly 2% per year after that (Shuster, 1975; Affinito, 1999).
The mechanism is well-characterized. Estradiol supports collagen synthesis in dermal fibroblasts through estrogen receptor pathways. When estradiol drops sharply at menopause, fibroblast collagen output drops with it. Verdier-Sévrain and colleagues synthesized the mechanisms in a widely-cited 2006 review (Verdier-Sévrain, 2006).
The clinical picture: skin thins, elasticity drops, wound healing slows, and structural markers of aging accelerate visibly in the years immediately following menopause. This is not perception. It's measurable.
What research supports as interventions:
- Menopausal hormone therapy (HRT/MHT) — the peer-reviewed literature supports meaningful benefits to skin thickness, elasticity, and collagen content in appropriately-selected women. The North American Menopause Society 2022 Position Statement is the current authoritative reference (NAMS, 2022).
- Resistance training — recent work shows independent skin benefits from resistance training in postmenopausal women (Nishikori, 2023).
- Nutrient adequacy — vitamin D, zinc, protein, and omega-3 all become more important, not less, as the substrate for collagen synthesis.
Measuring your estradiol, hs-CRP (chronic inflammation accelerates the loss), HbA1c (glycation compounds it), and nutrient markers gives you a data-informed picture of what's happening. That combination is what the JenSkin panel measures.