My mother was a spiritualist. We had weekly séances at our house with a neighbor who was a medium and various friends, and so I was brought up with the idea that there are many realms of being all around us. So that prepared me for Buddhism, and especially Tibetan Buddhism with all its talk of different realms and dimensions of being.
When you see deterioration in the skin or the hair, you are having problems with the subtle body. You're taking in too much bad energy, usually from people, or you're thinking too many negative thoughts. You are pulling an energy that is not suitable for the human form.