Everything you ever wanted to know about stretch marks

«Re­mem­ber to use ple­nty of cream or you’ll get stretch marks». Does that phrase sound fa­mi­liar? Pretty much the first thing you hear in con­nec­tion with pregnancy is stretch marks. I mys­elf just ap­plied some oil every now and then and was ter­ri­bly an­noyed that I eit­her could­n’t get dres­sed for ages or just ever­y­thing was soa­ked in oil. 

So let’s get to the bot­tom of it:

What are stretch marks anyway?

Stretch marks are small te­ars in the skin that can oc­cur due to ra­pid gain/growth. In the pro­cess, the con­nec­tive tis­sue stret­ches bey­ond a cer­tain de­gree. Ela­s­tic col­la­gen fi­bers of the skin are pul­led apart and tear. This can hap­pen du­ring pregnancy, for ex­am­ple. A wi­de­spread re­ason is also a ra­pid growth in length du­ring pu­berty — or sim­ply a strong weight gain.

Why do some women get stretch marks and others do not?

Ap­pro­xi­m­ately 50% of all wo­men get stretch marks. These are partly ge­ne­tic, as there are dif­fe­rent ty­pes of con­nec­tive tis­sue. So some peo­ple have a weak con­nec­tive tis­sue by birth. Stretch marks are par­ti­cu­larly com­mon on areas of the body that are sub­ject to se­vere stret­ching, such as the ab­do­men or chest. They are also com­mon on the thighs, hips and bottom.

What can be done about stretch marks?

If you have a ge­ne­tic pre­dis­po­si­tion to stretch marks, you will not be able to avoid them com­ple­tely. But you can re­duce the ext­ent. There are va­rious tricks for this:

1. Sup­port­ing clot­hing — make sure that your bra fits well and eit­her grows with you (tem­po­r­a­rily our bra ex­ten­ders might help you here in Your­Hap­py­Box #1. Also sup­port­ing un­der­wear or waist sup­port belts as we in­cluded them in Your­Hap­py­Box #3  . This is where you mi­ni­mize the load on en­su­res that the skin is less stressed.
2. Cream, cream, cream and plug There are pregnancy oils like sand on the sea. De­pen­ding on the in­gre­di­ents, some oils help more than others. Make sure that vit­amins A and E are pre­sent. These con­tain lin­o­leic acid and an­ti­oxi­dants, re­vi­ta­li­zing the skin. At Your­Hap­py­Box we have cho­sen the own crea­tion of the Bahn­hof Apo­theke Kemp­ten. The oil was crea­ted by the well-known mid­wife In­ge­borg Sta­del­mann and con­ta­ins al­mond, sun­flower, wheat germ, evening prim­rose and hemp oil as well as la­ven­der, ner­oli, rose, Ho-Sho, ro­se­wood. You can find it in our Star­ter­Box as well as in our Re­fill Shop, be­cause smear, smear, smear 😉 Little tip so you don’t have to wait hours for it to be ab­sor­bed. Ap­ply it to damp skin and the oils will be ab­sor­bed and not sme­ared back and forth on the sur­face of your skin. If you make pluck­ing mo­ve­ments, where you gently pull away small skin rolls up­wards with your th­umb and fo­re­fin­ger, it is sup­po­sed to sti­mu­late the blood cir­cu­la­tion and do good to the con­nec­tive tis­sue. Please, ho­we­ver, the 36th SSW the pluck­ing mas­sa­ges omit, pro­ba­bly ra­ther rare that ther­eby the con­trac­tions are trig­ge­red, but bet­ter safe than sorry.
3. Cos­me­tic tre­at­ment – There are pos­si­bi­li­ties to re­move the stretch marks by la­ser or mi­cro­need­ling. I would de­fi­ni­tely re­com­mend a pro­fes­sio­nal con­sul­ta­tion with your trus­ted doctor.

Most or at least half of us have these marks. If they are re­ally bo­the­ring you and you can af­ford to get rid of them, then by all me­ans talk to ex­perts about your op­ti­ons. Luckily, more and more fa­mous wo­men are tal­king about their stretch marks and when­ever you feel like no one has it but you, check in­sta­gram with #lovey­our­lines.

As al­ways, the fol­lo­wing ap­plies to our re­se­arch. We would like to gather as much know-how as pos­si­ble and pro­vide you with links. Every body is dif­fe­rent and re­acts ac­cor­din­gly. It never hurts to talk to your mid­wife and/or doc­tor, espe­ci­ally if you have the fee­ling that it is dif­fe­rent for you.

If you want to read more about it, we can re­com­mend this ar­ticle. .