3 Ways Your Skin Ages and How to Fight Them
By Kate Gardner
When you're young, you can't imagine your skin getting old. But it does. You may not notice the changes, happening little by little, until you wake up one morning and wonder where all those wrinkles around your eyes came from. There's nothing we can do to halt all the ways our skin ages, but there are things we can do to slow them down and lessen their appearance.
If you want to take really good care of your skin, rewind time to when you were little and make sure you always put on sunscreen, never smoke, and drink lots of water. If you don't have the means to travel through time, here are three common skin-aging problems and tips to keep your skin looking younger.
Sunspots
According to healthline.com, sunspots are brown spots that often appear on your face, shoulders, arms, and the back of your hands. They are more common in people over 40 with fair skin. These spots, also known as liver spots, are caused by sun exposure. They are not dangerous or cancerous.
There are a number of home remedies that may fade sunspots. Aloe vera, licorice extract, and Vitamin C have all been shown to lighten them. If your sunspots don't respond to these treatments, dermatologists can offer help. Microdermabrasion sluffs off the outermost layers of skin, reducing the appearance of sunspots. Similarly, laser resurfacing removes the layers of damaged skin.
Sagging and Slack
Good Housekeeping says that skin begins to sag as you get older because the collagen and elastin that provide your skin structure and lift are harder to come by. This loss is caused in part by (you guessed it) sun exposure! UV rays break down existing collagen and make it harder for your skin to make new collagen. We also lose facial fat, which causes skin to look slack.
Many of the serums, lotions, and creams we see in the beauty aisle aim to firm up the skin. Antioxidant serums (like Vitamin C) and wearing sunscreen keep the problem from getting worse and creams with retinoids help skin feel and look a little firmer. For more lasting results, a dermatologist can use radiofrequency and ultrasound treatments that push heat into the skin. This helps boost your skin's ability to make its own collagen.
Fragile Skin
From Healthline, we learn it isn't just the look of skin that changes as we age. Its thickness and ability to withstand injuries changes, too. Our skin is made up of many layers, the thickest by far being the dermis (made of collagen and elastin). As we know, it's harder to make collagen and elastin as we get older. This leads to a much thinner dermis and skin that can tear and bruise easily.
Anything that helps skin make new collagen will help thinning skin, including retinoid creams and Vitamin C. At the dermatologist's office, you can have fillers injected, making thin skin thicker. They may also offer the light-based treatments intense pulsed light and photodynamic therapy. These can help up your collagen production.
We shouldn't be ashamed of our aging skin. We're lucky to get older! But a lot of these tips are based on taking care of your skin, not just to look younger but also to reduce damage and disease.
To learn more about your health, wellness, and fitness, see your local chiropractor at The Joint Chiropractic in Upland, Calif.
