What Is Aging Skin?
Throughout our lives our skin, the largest and most external of our organs, is subjected to multiple kinds of abuse like the sometimes harsh environment, our very own bad habits and just plain old normal aging.
As we age our skin undergoes a lot of changes including and not limited to:
- Photoaging from unprotected exposure to the sun
- A decrease in the strength and elasticity or Elastosis
- Thinning of the epidermis making the skin appear thinner and more translucent
- Thinning of blood vessel walls, making your skin bruise easier and more frequently
- A decrease in the number of melanocytes but an increase in their size making them more obvious especially in sun exposed areas
Anti Aging Skin Care: Why Is It Important?
Everybody wants to grow old gracefully. Everybody wants to hear their friends tell them “Wow, you haven’t aged a bit in 30 years!” Whoever tells you that they don’t like people to compliment them on looking young is probably lying. Taking care of our skins as we age is important because it helps us improve or maintain our outward appearance and the way we appear impacts our confidence dramatically.
Aging can’t be stopped, but you could at least grow gracefully with it. Anti-aging skin care is important because it is that one thing that you could do to ensure that you can count on your skin to still look beautiful 30 to 40 years down the road.
Just like all our organs in the body, natural aging can bring a list, a long one, of things that will eventually go wrong with our skins. Skin cancer is the most common of all cancers. In fact, cases of melanoma have been climbing steadily at 2.8% a year since 1981. This information alone should encourage us to take care of our skins-The earlier the better.
What Is The Best Routine To Prevent Aging
To prevent aging, it is best to use gentle products that are packed with anti-oxidants and nutrients that are formulated prevent, if not counter act, the effects of aging. For this it is best to vary your morning and evening routines a little bit.
- For the AM:
- A Gentle Cleanser Is Best: Something for sensitive skin, with a balanced pH and unscented. The goal here is to effectively cleanse your skin without doing any harm to it by introducing harmful detergents and chemicals.
- Anti-oxidants: Whether taken orally or applied topically, anti-oxidants protect your skin by binding to free radicals that could otherwise damage your cells. Free radicals are especially damaging to the lipids that make up the bi-lipid layer of your cells.
- SPF: A new study published in the American College of Physicians’ Annals of Internal Medicine (released June 2013) shows conclusively that sunscreen really does prevent photoaging. Even the Skin Cancer Foundation advocates the use of UVA/UVB sunscreen to protect against all forms of skin cancer.
- For the PM:
- Gentle Cleanser: Just like in the morning, wash off the day’s gunk of off your face with a gentle unscented cleanser.
- RETINOL: According to research only creams with retinol have any significant effect on wrinkles and age spots. They are only effective when left to sit on the skin for a while so it is best to use them at night.
- Deep Moisturizing Cream. The evening is your skin’s chance to rest and what better way to take advantage of this time than by feeding your skin with heavily penetrating moisturizing cream. These creams, especially the really effective ones, tend to be a little pricey though.
Anti-aging Creams To Revitalize And Restore
It can be quite overwhelming to walk in the drugstore or department store to pick your anti-aging cream. The dozens of options available to you in wide ranges of prices may make it difficult for you to choose just one. Below is a list of crowd favorites to make your search easier.
- Bubble & Bee Anti-aging Face Cream: Made with simple, all-organic ingredients (shea butter, vitamin E, organic rosehip oil) women all over are raving about how they’ve all said good bye to dark under eyes, dry skin and wrinkles all thanks to this little jar of moisturizing goodness.
- Dove Fresh Radiance Anti-aging Night Cream: A drug-store favorite. People who gave this product high ratings usually recommend it for winter.
- Paula’S Choice Resist Ultimate Anti-aging Hand Cream: With SPF 30 and anti-oxidants this hand cream pack a punch when it comes to protecting your skin. Although marketed as a hand cream a number of it’s loyal followers have used RESIST for the face as well.
Side Effects Of Anti-aging Creams
If you look closely at the bottles and jars your beauty products come in, you will notice a lot of foreign sounding words and chemicals. With all these beauty products with astrounding claims, it makes you wonder if all of those dozens of ingredients may potentially cause more harm than good.
When buying anti-aging creams you must take care to do things in moderation. The alphy hydroxy acids that a lot creams contain helps renew skin through microdermabrasion but can also cause skin discoloration when used in copious amounts and exposed to the sun. Retinol, the only known vitamin derivative that can actually improve the appearance of your wrinkles, is a known teratogen and can cause rashes and skin irritation. To improve their product’s shelf life companies may also enlist the help of parabens, known carcinogens, so you must stay extra vigialnt about that.
There are a lot of things to look out for when picking anti-aging creams so it is best to consult a health care professional for your concerns.
For most women who are looking for their “potion of youth” the search could mean years and years of trial and error. Jumping to and from department store brands to drugstore ones. To help you out in your search for your holy grail of anti-aging creams here are the things you need to look for:
What To Look For In Anti-aging Skin Care Cream?
- Effectivity. Sure 85% of women find that Brand X is the most effective cream out there for them but until you try it for yourself you will never really know how well it works on your skin. Every human being is genetically unique, even twins are mostly genetically different. So it would make sense that there is no ONE formulation that could work for all the kinds of skin out there.
- Lifestyle. You should pick a cream that fits your lifestyle. Are you out in the sun too often? Grab the anti-aging bottle with SPF 15 and above and skip the one with glycolic acid. Do you wear make up on a daily basis? Pick a formulation that is light enough to wear under your make up and reserve the thicker potions for night time application
- Price Range: Some anti-aging formulations can cost you about $5 a bottle while other can cost upwards to $100 for a tiny bottle. Identify your price range and choose from there that should narrow down your options significantly.
How To Choose An Anti-aging Skin Care Cream?
These are the ingredients you will want to look out for:
- Retinol: A derivative of Vitamin A, that seems to encourage the production of collagen and elastin (molecules that make skin elastic and supple).
- Hydorxy Acids: AHA & BHA are exofliants. Unlike mechanical exfoliants like scrubs, these work at the molecular level and are not only more effective but also milder on the skin. They help slough off dead skin cells to help healthy skin resurface.
- Vitamins & Anti-oxidants: help by protecting skin at the cellular level. Vitamins and anti-oxidants do this by nourishing our cells and by neutralizing free radicals.
- SPF: The most effective defense against photoaging. It protects the skin from the harsh rays of the sun and its detrimental effects on the skin.
- CoEnzyme Q10: Keeps cells healthy by optimizing the cell’s ability to use energy.
How Anti-aging Vitamins Restore Your Skin’S Glow?
Most anti-aging skin creams contain vitamins or derivatives so you may be wondering what that’s about. Just like human the skin needs to be “fed” too, after all it is still an organ and is therefore made up of cells that respond positively to nourishment. The trick then is to provide our skins with the right kind of food, the same way that we nourish our bodies. Below are the most common vitamins you find in anti-aging solutions and how they contribute to giving you healthy skin.
- Vitamin A: Present in most formulations as either retinol or retinoid, this vitamin has been scientifically proven to diminish fine lines by actually encouraging the synthesis of both collagen in elastin.
- Vitamin C: This vitamin is an essential vitamin in the formation of collagen.
- Vitamin E: Protects cell membranes from oxidative damage and protects collagen from damage.
- Niacinamide (B3): Prevents the skin from losing water content
What Is The Best Solution For Older Skin?
While it may be easier to prevent skin aging early on, older skin can still benefit from the treatments mentioned above. In fact one particular research has seen significant improvement in skins of middle aged men and women you regularly use sunscreen even if they’ve only started using it later in life.
It is never too late to start treating your skin like you ought to. Our skins provide a means of regulating our body temperatures and is our first line of defense against harmful foreign particles so we should take care of it as much as we can by eating healthy and provide our skins with the nutrition that they need.
