Five Natural Ways to Prevent Facial Aging

The biological make-up of our skin begins to show signs of aging as early as our 20s. Age shows not only on our face, neck and chest but all over. There are many ways to care for your skin and prevent premature aging. Following are five ways that you can age gracefully. These are things you can do in your daily life that will dramatically reduce signs of aging.

• Don’t smoke. If you do smoke, quit. We all know that smoking is bad for us and affects our body negatively. Smoking
  

  smoking causes wrinkles

  contributes to premature aging and many other health problems. The many chemicals in cigarettes influence the skin’s structure and dehydrate the cells, resulting in increased aging.

• Get some sleep. Research has shown that people who sleep regularly seven to eight hours a night are healthier than those who lack sleep or over sleep. Sleeping allows the body to repair cellular damage and recharge. To prevent signs of aging on the face, try sleeping on your back. Sleeping on your stomach or side can damage skin by slowing down circulation and weakening the skin’s elasticity, resulting in wrinkles.

• Sunscreen, use it, wear it, and love it. Wear sunscreen everyday-even on cloudy or rainy days, and even if you are just going to be outside a short time. We all know that the sun has harmful affects to the skin. Sun tanning and burning damage the skin, leading to premature aging. Sun exposure over time leads to wrinkles and ugly pigmentation spots. There is no excuse to not wear sunscreen, it comes in all forms and is formulated now to be lightweight and beneficial to the skin as well as giving sun protection.

• Cleanse, Hydrate and Moisturize the skin from the inside and outside. Hydrated skin is healthy and plump, looks moist and shows few wrinkles and lines. As we age our skin loses elasticity; using moisturizers with ingredients such as vitamins and minerals that help repair the skin is the best way to restore elasticity and prevent its break down. Be sure to remove all traces of make up or dirt each day by clensing morning and night with a natural soap or cleanser that is appropriate for your skin type. Drink lots of water to hydrate the skin internally and use a good moisturizer. Try a cleansing cream, oatmeal soap, intense facial moisturizer or zinc repair cream by Vivoderm.

• A healthy lifestyle and healthy diet can dramatically strengthen the skin and prevent premature aging. Fruits, vegetables,
  

  healthy diet and skin

  nuts and other nutrient- rich produce give the body strength to fight and repair damage. If you are good to your body from the inside out, you will have less external maintenance. Part of a healthy life style is getting exercise, so get up and get moving. Fit people also tend have less heath problems. Health problems can lead to premature aging of the skin by showing wrinkles and damage earlier than those people who choose to be healthy.

There is no way to prevent aging - it is inevitable, however there are ways to slow it down. Today there is plastic surgery and amazing skin care products to improve the look and feel of skin. But it’s never too late to prevent further damage so you don’t have to take the drastic measures of plastic surgery or spend tons of money on skin care later in life.

By Tiffany Oney

Tiffany Oney is a licensed esthetician, professional makeup artist and natural skincare authority.  She is currently pursuing her Bachelor of Arts in Communications Studies California State University, Long Beach and interning with Vivoderm Natural Skincare in Los Angeles, California.

Eat Your Way to Younger Skin

Lifestyle and Your Skin

“Is it too late to save my bad skin? I never paid much attention to my skin because I never had any skin problems. I never bothered with skin care products because I didn’t need to. Now I’m seeing wrinkles and spots forming, I guess it’s just too late to anything about it.” If this sounds like you, you may want to keep reading.Never fear, because there is still much that you can do to help your skin. If you are lost in sea of product choices, you can still be assured cosmetic dermatology can offer many alternative treatments.

Not surprisingly, many adults rarely consult a dermatologist that is until AFTER the signs of aging have appeared. Wrinkles, of course, are the chief complaint. Your skin may feel rough to the touch, and even sore, especially in drying environmental conditions such as on an airplane or in a low-humidity environment like the desert or high-altitude cities. In the winter, when indoor heating is used, your skin gets even more dehydrated, making the wrinkles look worse. Your skin may catch on rough clothing. You may also notice wrinkles on your neck or others parts of your body.

Those who have never had skin issues or were blessed to even have beautiful skin for most of the lives, are now desperate to address the skin wrinkles and many run to the dermatologist feeling a lot of regret. Although genes certainly play a role in one’s skin condition, decades of neglect, or even mistreatment of their skin is most frequently the source of their skin problems. Many say that if they knew then what they know now, they would have done things very differently and taken better care of their skin.
There are numerous explanations for unhealthy skin but the main causes tend to be an unhealthy diet, an ineffectual cleansing routine, and poor lifestyle choices.

Poor Diet
Your skin is a living, breathing organ of the body and it needs proper nourishment and hydration to look and feel its best. When your skin is deprived of the necessary vitamins, minerals, and nutrients that it needs it is unable to functional at optimal levels and the structure slowly begins to break down. This breakdown results in dry skin, blemishes, discoloration, wrinkles, and premature ageing.

In order to avoid this breakdown you need to feed your skin a varied mix of important nutrients each day. Ingesting sufficient amounts of vitamin A, a nutrient that can be found in citrus fruits and orange vegetables, can help you avoid dry skin and blemishes. Eating foods rich in the vitamin B group like brewer’s yeast or breads, or taking a vitamin B group supplement, can help you ward of skin discoloration, dry skin, dermatitis, shallow skin, and premature ageing.

To help discourage wrinkles, pale skin, sun damage, blemishes, and other unhealthy skin symptoms, nutrients like calcium, protein, iodine, niacin, folic acid, iron, and copper are very important to a healthy diet. Get these effective skin helpers by enjoying foods like mild, eggs, cheese, chicken, fish, leafy vegetables, fruits, and grains.

Poor Hygiene
Another common cause of unhealthy skin is poor hygiene. Whether this involves the failure to clean your skin often enough or the use of an ineffective cleansing routine, built-up dirt and grime can lead to blemishes, premature ageing, shallowness, dry skin, and wrinkles.

When your skin is not properly cleaned on a regular basis, dirt, pollution and other harmful substances are allowed to build up on your skin and clog the pores. Clogged pores result in breakouts, dry skin, and the reduction of cell renewal.

To get the most out of your cleansing routine make sure that you wash your skin twice a day, everyday. Also, make sure that you are using an effective cleanser like a soap that is specially formulated for deep cleansing. Make sure that you use gentle pressure when cleaning the skin, do not scrub or pull on the skin since this can result in tiny tears that are susceptible to irritation and infection. Finally, always follow your cleansing routine with a hydrating moisturizer that also contains a sunscreen in order to hydrate your skin and protect it from sun damage.

Bad Lifestyle Habits
Even if you enjoy a healthy diet and pay special attention to your skin care regime you can still be sabotaging the health of your skin by indulging in unhealthy habits. Habits like sun tanning, smoking, choosing fizzy drinks or sodas over water, and wearing heavy makeup can lead to the development of unhealthy skin. Avoid excessive sun exposure, always wear sunscreen with an SPF (sun protection factor) of at least 15, stop smoking and avoid those who smoke, drink plenty of water, and choose light cosmetics if you want your skin to stay young and healthy looking for years to come.

Buying Skincare

Many consumers are frustrated by skin care products that don’t do what they claim to. Worse still is investing in an expensive yet ineffective cream or treatment only to discover the cheapest drug-store brand would work just as well. In a world of hyper-consumerism, false advertising and a plethora of products from which to choose, how do you choose the good from the bad?

There are some great products on the market that can genuinely improve your skin’s appearance and help your skin look smoother, more radiant, and youthful. But, there are literally thousands of products to choose from and unless you spend hours a day researching beauty products, it’s difficult to find the one of the few that actually produces real results and eliminates years of aging from your face and body.

Not only should a quality skin product help reduce bags under, and fine lines around, the eyes, but it should even out coloration inconsistencies caused by age spots and other unwanted pigment concentrations.

In a marketing-rich world of super models and glamorous actors, many will understandably spend any amount of money to make themselves look better or younger. Cosmetic surgery and skin care is a multi-billion dollar industry.

As the law of supply and demand proves, the higher the demand for youth and beauity, the more manufacturers will rush to provide the solution. Many times this rush results in the creation of an inferior product with little to no research and development to back it.

All of the money goes into the marketing of the product. On the surface everything looks great. The bottles and jars that the creams come in look appealing. The magazine advertisements are glossy, complete with a youthful looking model or a well known celebrity who doesn’t even really use the products.

You can’t really blame these companies. When you are spending a fortune paying for marketing, whether it be on the product containers, magazine, radio, and TV ads, royalties paid to celebrities and models, you have to charge a lot of money for your products or you’re going to lose money.

On the other hand, this doesn’t mean you and I have to fall for these types of marketing schemes. After all, these companies aren’t going to encounter any shortage of people who will open their wallets and purses to purchase their products anytime soon. The reality is most people simply won’t take any time to research products and understand what ingredients work and what ingredients are actually bad for your skin!