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To begin, we must look into the skin itself before moving directly to stretch marks.

Skin is made up mainly of connections of elastin fibers and collagen, this forms a "skin network". elastin is a protein, and we must clearly understand that it allows the skin to have stretching properties. Once stretch marks have appeared it actually means that the elastin has been damaged.

Normal skin, during or after an "injury"(any type of damage to the skin), is replaced by a scar. To quickly connect collagen and elastin fibers, the body leaves us with stretch marks. The skin can't take too much stretching, and up to a certain point it is torn, this is the case of stretch marks. A stretch mark is a result of a weakening of the "skin network", which includes the cells and the connective fibre tissues in between the first and second later of skin. A stretch mark is a scar that is not actually on the surface of your skin, but in between your first and second layer of skin.

it doesn't just end here, we also have to look into the elastin fibers and the collagen network. Elastin Fibers are an important part of the skin network. Elastin fibers can be pulled to grow up to 1.5 times their size and then once untensed can move back to the original size. But it can occur that once the stretched skin, molds back into place, it can leave behind a stretch mark.

Stretch Mark Formation

In reality a stretch mark is really damaged tissue, once tissue is damaged fibrocytes begin to undergo a process of mitosis.

In this case, the mitosis mat leave you with more than just one stretch mark, but many. We must keep in mind though that the stretching of the skin is not necessarily the only reason one may have a stretch mark. In fact there exist many reasons for the appearance of "stretch marks".

* Firstly, there is a mechanical factor that plays a role in the skins fragility properties. This has to do with weight gain, pregnancy or growth.

* Secondly, there is an endocrine factor that is mostly due to the malfunction of the pituitary-hypothalamic complex. This, consequentially, leads to a disregulated cortisol behaviour, which gives us a weaken collagen network.

* Factors that are induced clinically are related to the use of corticoids treatments.

* The factor that is metabolic has to do mostly with a sugar metabolism disorder or glycation, this interrupts the biosynthesis process leading to problems with proteins such as collagen. This easily leads to a reduction in the skin's elasticity, which in the end reduces the skin elasticity.

It is evident that stretch marks don't only come from weight gain and rapid growth, but also come from clinically induced and hormonal situations. The reasons are many, but the result is one; a discolored, long line under your skin that is just as hard to remove as any other scar no matter what type of stretch marks removal you use.