Last Updated on 13th May 2022 by Caroline Haye
The weird and wonderful world of skin colour: part 4
Can green pigment restore skin pigment? may sound like a nonsensical question. After all, the green pigment chlorophyll is completely different from the skin pigment melanin (which does not function in areas of vitiligo)… Isn’t it? Well, yes. But read on because there is a connection. And I’ll come to it after exploring more of The Weird and Wonderful World of Skin Colour. (Parts one, two and three available via these links.)
Writing this blog series has made me realise what a multi-toned planet we inhabit. If you find this subject as fascinating as I do, then this website, Causes of Color, is well worth a read. And if you think human beings come in a wide variety of tones, animals (and plants) leave us standing.
The predominant pigment in humans – and other mammals – is melanin (the brown pigment that disappears in vitiligo). This is why variations in the colour of human skin revolve mainly around the quantity, or lack, of brown pigment present.
This gives rise to an impressive range of different shades of skin. But these are as nothing in comparison to the mind-boggling palette of the animal kingdom… Which ranges from transparent to drab, from subtle to vividly bright and even luminous.
Examples of the diverse pigments found in animals
Most humans have just one skin colour: most animals are multi-coloured
Most human beings have one fairly uniform colour to their whole skin. (Unless they have a particular skin disorder, like vitiligo or mosaicism)… While most animals have multicoloured skin, scales, fur or feathers, often in fascinating patterns. And whereas human skin simply turns either pink or a deeper shade of brown (depending on the amount of melanin present) when exposed to sunlight, many animals change colour dramatically. This can be for a variety of reasons, like age, camouflage, mating, climate, or diet. For example, the reason flamingos are pink is because they eat shrimp. And those shrimp have, in turn, fed off microscopic algae that manufacture red and yellow carotenoids. Without these “second-hand” pigments in their diet, all flamingos (and shrimps) would be grey.
Pigmentary disorders and genetic anomalies
Like humans, their colouring can also be affected by pigmentary disorders… Resulting in either leucism, albinism or melanism. Which means their markings can differ from the norm, like the amazing little kitty below.
What I didn’t know until it popped up on my browser was that plants can also suffer from such disorders. Just like human leukoderma (loss of skin pigment) the absence of pigment in plants causes them to turn white like this strawberry. And wherever membranes are thin – on petals and leaves, for example – albinism causes the plant to appear translucent like the one below.
In the plant world the pigment affected is not melanin, of course, but chlorophyll. Chlorophyll, as you will probably remember from your school-day biology lessons, is the green pigment responsible for the absorption of light to provide energy for photosynthesis. Not only is this pigment crucial for the plant’s survival (which is why albinism is lethal to plants) but it also has so many human health benefits that, whilst they are tried and tested anecdotally, science has not yet fully fathomed them.
Plant pigment for human health
The thing I find particularly interesting about this, from a personal perspective anyway, is that one of the nutritional supplements I took to repigment my vitiligo (and still use every day to keep it at bay) is a green food which, of course, is full of chlorophyll. I’m glad to say that eating extra-large quantities of greens doesn’t turn a person green in the way that the shrimp turn flamingos pink! But, what does seem to happen is that the antioxidants and other nutrients in these chlorophyll-rich “superfoods” produces a healthy environment in the human body for normal melanin production to resume.
I suppose what strikes me as satisfyingly apt is that it should be the pigment found in one kind of organism that is instrumental in restoring pigment to an entirely different species. It’s almost like getting a transfusion from the plant world! So it seems that the answer to the question, can green pigment restore skin pigment, is yes it can! How weird and wonderful is that?
So, to all those “pigment donor” veggies out there that selflessly lay down their lives to keep my skin and yours healthy, I say a sincere thank you.
