Anti-Aging Skin Care: What You Need To Know
Understanding how the body ages is the first step in identifying the most effective practices for anti-aging skin care. If you are aware of what causes the skin to age, it is far easier to find the appropriate products. Your knowledge will arm you with the confidence to choose products with the right ingredients to fulfill your skin care needs. This is always a better option than blindly following what everyone else is doing.
There are three main reasons and causes of wrinkles and aging skin.
The first cause of aging skin is something called oxidization. This occurs as we age because molecules in our body begin to become unstable. Known as free radicals, these molecules have a significant impact on our cell behavior and have been attributed with all sorts of illnesses. Antioxidants are one of the biggest weapons to combat the damage caused by free radicals. So, any product you choose to use needs to replenish and instill antioxidants into the skin.
The second greatest reason for aging skin is the reduction in our bodies ability to produce collagen and elastin. Collagen and elastin are the building blocks of healthy, firm skin. This includes it’s connection to facial tissues and bone. With the aging process the ability of the body to produce elastin and collagen is greatly diminished. This leaves us with thinner,less firm skin.
Third, the production of hyaluronic acid which is responsible for regulating the growth and renewal process of our skin slows. This causes our skin to appear more aged, dry, and more wrinkled.
These three causes of wrinkles and aging skin need to be considered when buying skin care products. If you are not addressing these and making sure that the ingredients in the products you use are able to address these skin factors, then you are not getting the maximum results possible from your skin care.
In sum, you want to make sure you choose products that are able to fight back the signs of aging by focusing on ending and replenishing these causes of aging.
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What You Eat Today You Wear Tomorrow
Our diet influences how we look, how we feel and, ultimately, how we die. Saturated fats contribute to heart disease; alcohol to liver disease; and refined carbohydrates to cancer. But one vital organ that rarely seems to get mentioned in all of this is the skin. It may be the only external organ, but it is equally affected by what we put inside our bodies. A busy and complex material, like any other in the body, skin needs a precise and complete supply of nutrients to regenerate, repair and defend itself.
The high prevalence of skin problems today is largely attributable to eating too many prepackaged, chemically preserved and calorie-dense foods lacking the nutrients that the skin needs. Skincare manufacturers have sought to remedy this situation by producing a preponderance of creams and lotions containing every vitamin from the A to K and phytochemicals to boot. Although these products provide substantial profits to manufacturers, they rarely penetrate to the dermal layers of the skin where they can have impact.
Although there are some creams on the market that actually have a positive impact on the skin, it is more effective — and undoubtedly cheaper — to eat what the skin needs from your plate. Eating is a sure way to get nutrients to where they are needed. As an added benefit, many of the foods needed for healthy skin tissue are also those that benefit the circulation, digestion and elimination mechanisms.
The most important nutrients for the skin are antioxidants. Antioxidants perform such a fundamental role in destroying the free radicals that are the root of much age-related deterioration, that they can effectively be defined as antiaging nutrients.
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Smoking: The Second Leading Cause of Wrinkling
After the sun, smoking accelerates the normal aging process of your skin, contributing to wrinkles. It thins the skin by around 40%, so that water escapes more easily. Further damage is caused by the chemicals in cigarettes which break down the fibers in collagen and elasticity, mimicking and accelerating the normal aging process. Cigarette smoke also contains a substance called benzopyrene which destroys the vitamin C needed for collagen manufacturing and is replete with free radicals that degrade the skin. Smoking also constricts the tiny capillaries that feed the skin so that it is deprived of nutrients and oxygen.
And if that wasn’t enough, the facial expressions that smoking encourages - squinting of the eyes and puckering of the lips - stretch the most delicate skin on the face. All of these effects together can add 15 years to the age of your skin and you are five times more likely to have prominent wrinkles than non-smokers of the same age.
To combat the impact of smoking, “just say no.” If you have tried and failed, at least decrease your intake of cigarettes while increasing your intake of antioxidant nutrients and water to help counter some of the effects.
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Antioxidants: Your Armor Against Aging
When it comes to aging, free radicals are public enemy number one. Our cells use oxygen to produce energy. In the process, they generate free radicals - unstable oxygen molecules created during basic metabolic functions as circulation and digestion. Free radicals are also produced by sunlight, by toxins such as pesticides, and by cigarette smoke and air pollution. Most free radicals encountered in our bodies, however, come from oxygen. They are an unavoidable by-product of daily living.
Free radicals can damage virtually every part of a cell, including the nucleus, where DNA, the body’s unique genetic blueprint, is produced. If they connect with collagen molecules in our skin, the result is that the collagen becomes damaged. When the collagen becomes damaged, the skin gets discolored and stiff and loses elasticity. The end result is that free radicals sap our skin of its youthful appearance.
Fortunately, our bodies have developed a defense system for fighting free radicals. This defense system is powered by antioxidants. Antioxidants join with free radicals to prevent them from latching on to the various components of other cells. Essentially, antioxidants work by making the free radical harmless.
The most power antioxidants are vitamins such as E, C and beta-carotene. Others, however, occur naturally inside the human body. Our inability to fight free radical damage occurs when our bodies are out of balance. In other words, when free radicals are produced in circumstances such as prolonged exposure to sunlight or ingestion of toxins such as cigarette smoke, the body’s antioxidant system can be overwhelmed and the free radicals move about unchecked. Known as oxidative stress, supplementing the body’s supply of antioxidants can, however, keep this situation to a minimum, or at least slow it down considerably.
What we eat is the first step in keeping an adequate supply of antioxidants in our body. Include an array of colorful, pigmented fruits and vegetables in your diet every day. Recommended vegetables include broccoli, spinach, kale, brussel sprouts and other dark, leafy greens. And recommended fruits include blueberries, raspberries, cranberries, blackberries, and goji berries.
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