Anti-Aging Skin Care: Your Easy Guide
Your skin is a clear indicator of your age.
If you ask someone to guess your age, it’s your skin that they’ll look at first to make their estimate.
Skin that looks like crepe paper, so called liver spots, sun damage, wrinkles and just generally unhealthy looking skin will all make you look older.
You never want any of those awkward moments when someone assumes your daughter is your granddaughter or your grandfather is your brother.
The best anti-aging skin care is prevention and it starts now...
Using the correct techniques, it’s possible to cut up to 25 years off your appearance, maybe more, and look and feel better too.
For the best ant-aging skin care serum, please check out my article The Best Anti Aging Skin Care Products.
The Best Anti-Aging Skin Care: Diet
The first dimension in anti-aging skin care is your diet.
More...
See my previous posts Anti Aging Foods for Seniors: What to Eat, What to Avoid
and Anti-Aging Foods for Women: Why It’s Different for additional information.
The healthier we eat, the smoother and healthier our skin will be. This stands to reason, when you consider that it’s your food that provides your body with the cellular building blocks needed to look after not only your skin but every other tissue and muscle in your body. You literally are what you eat.
If you want healthy skin you must have a healthy diet.
There are three main things you need in your diet for the best anti-aging skin care.
They are antioxidants, vitamins and moisture.
The anti-oxidants, found in foods such as citrus fruits and fish, will help protect your skin cells (and every other cell) from oxidization and attack from free radicals. This will mean that the skin cells come under less fire and so appear healthier. At the same time this will help protect the skin and other cells against cancer by lowering the chance of the DNA behind the cell walls being damaged or mutated.
Vitamins, particularly vitamin A and E, help to rebuild your skin and are a great way to encourage the body to heal scars and to help smooth out wrinkles.
Essential fatty acids meanwhile will provide your skin with oil to keep it subtle and prevent it becoming dry and flaky. Omega 3 fatty acid will act as both as an anti-inflammatory agent and a source of antioxidants, while a multivitamin tablet will provide the rest. Check out my 4 Minute Keto book for a diet rich in fatty acids and vitamins, while at the same time losing weight.
The Best Anti-Aging Skin Care: Lifestyle
Anti-aging skin care is also about lifestyle.
How you treat your body is reflected in your skin's appearance. While soaking up the sun will help us to look bronzed and healthy in the short term, it will also lead to damaged skin cells later on in life.
This may not have any visible effect until the appearance of wrinkles in your senior years.
Similarly, it’s important that you make sure that you get lots of sleep.
One of the reasons for this is that sleep is when your body repairs damage done during the day. It helps in the rejuvenation of your skin overnight.
One of the ways in which this works is through the release of human growth hormone, or HGH, which is a hormone that encourages anabolism in the body allowing it to repair wounds, rebuild muscle, replace damaged cells and encourage growth in the muscles and bones (though the bones stop growing after puberty when the ‘growth plates’ seal off).
As well as sleep, another way to encourage the natural production of growth hormone (synthetic growth hormone is used a lot by bodybuilders and celebrities, but is illegal in most states and countries and very expensive in those where it's not) is to exercise and to take hot showers, both of which will trigger an anabolic cycle.
Anti-Aging Skin Care Products
The most obvious aspect of the best anti-aging skin care is the use of anti-aging creams, serums and other similar products.
These work in multiple ways, both protecting your skin from outside attack from UV rays and environmental factors such as exhaust fumes, pesticides and fertilizer. They provide your skin with essential nutrients.
There are two really important aspects to using anti-aging skin care products:
- Use only high quality natural products (containing no dangerous chemicals and, from an ethical standpoint, not tested on animals) and
- Make sure that you follow a routine and apply your creams in the morning and in the night before bed.
Your routine should begin with an exfoliating cream or face wash which will remove dead skin cells that can otherwise interfere with the mechanism of the moisturizing creams and nutrients. This also makes you look younger by evening out your skin tone.
After this you should then use a protective cream such as Protect and Perfect from No 7, which will protect your skin from UV rays.
Finally, a rejuvenating moisturizer should be applied which should contain vitamins A and E, both of which, as we have already seen, are vital to your skin's health.
How to Look Younger: What Works and What Doesn't
This will be addressed in my next post in this series covering the best ant-aging skin care, coming soon.
I certainly agree that the best the best way to care for your skin in order to make you look many years younger than your actual age is a healthy lifestyle. Most people tend to focus too much on beauty products that they often neglect the importance of a healthy, balanced diet, getting enough sleep, regular exercise and drinking lots of water.
When I was younger, I never bothered to take care of my skin as I thought I would just deal with it when I get older. I wished I had given more attention to my skin before so I do not have to spend a lot on skin care products today. Anyway, I am looking forward to your post on how to look younger, thanks Phil.
Yes, Alice, there’s no doubt that prevention is better than cure and a healthy life style is the best precursor to healthy skin as we age.
Unfortunately, most young people have difficulty believing that they will actually become an old person eventually!
Hi Phil, thanks for your article. This is really very helpful. You have pointed the most important factors for a healthier skin as you age – diet and lifestyle.
I will be looking forward to your topic about skin care products or regimen.
Hi Phil! Thank you so much for sharing! I’m in my early 30s and I’m starting to see the effects of my bad decisions in my 20s if you know what I mean. Lack of sleep, poor diet, alcohol consumption I’m sure are contributing factors.
I have very thin skin around the eyes and starting to get some wrinkles. I have used all the creams! Do you know of any product or even a natural remedy that tightens the skin?
Thank you for your interest, Sarah.
I am currently researching serums in exactly the area you’re enquiring about.
Could I suggest that you go back to the site https://agingslowdown.com and click the free book giveaway to the right. That will put you on my mailing list and keep you informed of any recommendations.
And I’ll never, ever spam you!!
I know my wife worries about aging. She worries constantly about the bags under her eyes and dry cracked skin as she gets older. I myself don’t worry too much but it is important to her to look her best. I’m going to order the age slower book and have her give it a read. I think she will get a lot out of it. Thanks for writing the article.
Great idea, Cory. As they say “Happy wife, happy life.”
Please get the book. That will add you to my mailing list so that I can keep you informed about latest developments and any research I do into products that I’m happy to recommend.
What you are saying is so true. Lifestyle is so important. You are what you eat and you need to drink plenty of water to keep your skin hydrated. My mother has amazing skin for her age and everyone things she’s 15 years younger than she really is. She takes care of her skin and applies her skin care daily. I am hoping to experience the same. I am 30 now and I still get asked for ID all the time. Vitamins in good food is so important.
I’m so jealous. No one ever asks me for id, and I sometimes complain about it. But I guess at 74, even if I only look 54, they’re still not going to ask, are they?
Well done!
I have always believed in prevention is better than cure and in the case of our skins this has been proven to be very true. I agree with you 100% that natural products applied daily are the best methods to fighting the signs of aging. I would however like to add from personal experience that having a morning moisturizing cream that has a built in sunscreen of SPF 20 or higher is also very important to help fight the suns harmful effects.
Thanks for some really great tips and look forward to reading more about some practical ways to ward off the signs of aging.
Rich
Thanks Rich. Yes, a morning moisturizer is a good practice, though I’d only include the SPF if you’re likely to be spending time in the sun that day.
It is really important we pay attention to how we look, especially our skin. Sometimes, people look far older than their actual age. Fortunately, I look far younger than my actual age. I guess I am naturally blessed with that. All the same, I think I need to maintain that look and feel by taking all necessary precautions and using healthcare/beauty products that are proven to slow down the aging process.Thanks for the advice and recommendations on skincare. I’ll have to pay closer attention to the level of UV radiation I expose myself to as I go about my everyday activities. Looking forward to your next post.
Thanks for your comments. I know I’m going against current belief here, but I have been suntanned every summer all my life, yet have no damage to my skin and people compliment me on it. Especially when I have a suntan! I have a horror of sunburn though, and avoid it by getting my suntan slowly in Spring. Perhaps that’s the answer?
looking younger than you really are is very fullfilling knowing when you are 40yrs and some body is asked to guess how old you are they will cut your age by half it has been happen to someone i know she really looks young than she is but the things is she eats well lifes well she does not drink too this has enable her skin to remain younger always
You’re so right, Charles.
I look much younger than my age because of good lifestyle choices, but sometimes think it would be even better if I didn’t drink.
After reading your article I am feeling that it is happening in my real life. None of us are getting younger any more but our skin represents it how care we are taking for our health. My wife always advice me to take care of my body through using some oil, cream and other cosmetics products. I am going to refer your article to her. I believe if we don’t care about our eating habit, sleeping properly and doing a little bit exercise, aging symptoms are seen quickly. However I am looking forward a natural anti aging product which is able remove skin aging spots. Thanks for sharing.
I will post future articles recommending products to use.
They must be
1. Effective. No one wants to spend money on stuff that doesn’t work.
2. Natural. I have deep suspicions of Big Pharma and will only recommend natural products.
3. Not tested on animals. Just one of my personal philosophies.