The Low Down On Anti-aging Protection For Your Skin
Are you confused by all the advertising on anti-aging skin care ingredients?
What ones work?
How do they actually work?
What ones are more hope than reality?
Lately, I’ve been researching into anti-aging products and how they may help your skin stay fresher and younger-looking. This is because I have discovered some great new ingredients to use in my skin care products that seem to work really well. And other ingredients that I know and prescribe as a naturopath to reverse the main causes of internal aging and illness (help! my body is degenerating). And now they are being used externally and promoted commercially as “new” magic anti-aging ingredients.
If you value products that have integrity – that will look after your skin, that are truly natural and don’t have nasties in them and that, with regular use, actually help your skin to look fresher and younger, then I’m with you on this. I’m after natural products that– ultimately- slow the aging process. “Is this too much to expect?”, I constantly ask myself. Actually, the solution, as always in life it seems, is multi-factorial. There are several areas of action that need to be considered in an anti-aging approach to skincare.
1. What Causes Aging, Illness and Wrinkles?
There is one common factor – INFLAMMATION. No, you can’t see it or feel it, but it is present in many of us at a cellular level, working away and damaging the integrity and structure of your body. This is caused by the activity of free radicals that create an “oxidation chain reaction”. This results in small, incremental damage over time, so that the results are not obvious until you have some niggly symptoms some time later - even years later. You may eventually feel less energetic, slightly creaky in the joints, have minor ongoing sinus, get eczema or allergies that you didn’t have before, have digestive issues….and start to show some of the 7 signs of aging. Including wrinkles.
2. The Greatest Contributor To An Aged Skin
If you were a “flower child” of the ‘1950s, 1960’s or even 1970s, its likely that you smothered yourself in oil and lay out in the sun to get an all over, even suntan. It was your number one beauty tool – or so we thought! Remember Q-tol to soothe sunburn? But where was our sunscreen in those days? Sitting in the shade or wearing a long sleeved shirt was the only sunscreen that I remember.
The number one cause of wrinkles and skin aging is excessive exposure to ultra-violet light. Even sun beds are not safe – they create an even more concentrated UV ray than is present in the sun. The trouble with UV rays is that you don’t feel them or see them. The sun’s heat is from infra-red rays, which don’t cause the same havoc on your skin. Whereas ultra violet rays – especially UVA- just sneak on into your skin and create damage to your collagen at a deeper level without you even noticing. Its the same rays that fade your carpet and drapes. Winter and summer.
3. What Causes Age Spots?
Over your life time, ultra violet rays reach into your skin and stimulate the action of special pigmentation-generating cells called melanocytes, which increases melanin production. This is the basis of a sun tan.
With over-exposure to UV rays, hyper-pigmentation occurs under the surface of your skin in “splodges” that stick together, like large freckles, only darker in colour. As you age and as you continue to be exposed to the sun without adequate protection, these areas of high pigmentation come closer to the surface and begin to show themselves as “age spots”. It is estimated that age spots under your skin will start to show fully in about 10 years’ time, unless you take steps to slow the process.
If you have spent a lot of time in the driver’s seat over the years, (driving on the left of the road) you will probably see areas of pigmentation along the right side of your jaw by now. If you have been a passenger, you will see them on the left side. If you were a regular sun worshipper, then they could be everywhere.
How do you know if age spots are ready and waiting, under your skin? Beauty Therapists use a “black lamp” also known as a Skin Scanner or Woods Lamp which can see under the surface of your skin. What is visible on the surface can look totally different to what is actually happening underneath your skin. Scary!
Which brings me to your original question….
4. What’s All The Fuss About Collagen?
If you watch the ads, you will know that boosting collagen is the key to anti-aging skin care. But what do you actually know about collagen?
Collagen is part of our “connective tissue”. It creates tensile strength and support to our bodies. Collagen is not only a component of skin, but also of the rest of our body. It is what gives our skin firmness and support. When it is depleted and not replaced quickly enough, skin starts to become slack and fine wrinkles begin to appear.
Depleted levels of collagen production are a “side effect” of decreasing hormone levels – especially accelerating around the time of menopause. Which is why all those thousands of women who used to take HRT also had nice skin. But now the alarming health risks of taking HRT are well known, and it is no longer a drug to be used lightly by the masses who are afraid of growing old, or of going through menopause naturally.
By applying collagen to the skin, we can only hope for one result – it helps retain moisture, thus plumping up fine lines and making wrinkles less obvious. But it doesn’t actually replace the lost collagen because the size of the molecule of collagen cannot penetrate the surface of your skin.
5. What about taking collagen internally?
I’m not convinced that this one action will result in your having beautiful, ageless skin. The trouble is that if your whole body is depleted in collagen, there is no way of telling the capsule contents to just to go to your skin. It will go wherever your body most needs it first.
Further more, how do we know that by swallowing collagen capsules, they will actually be used by your body to increase its collagen supply? In other words, great idea, but does it work? As yet I am still searching for more evidence to support this concept.
Another approach is to supply the body with more of the building blocks it needs to start making its own additional collagen. So you get the type of collagen that is perfect for use in the body. To me, this makes more sense.
And no doubt you have been reading all of this - with a furrowed brow!- thinking:
6. OK. So How Do I Stop My Aging Process?
Alright, maybe “stop” is too much to expect.
Would you be happy with “slowing down” the aging process?
Here’s my Anti-aging prescription for you:
- Stop those niggly health issues and create an anti-inflammatory lifestyle
- Eat plenty of anti-oxidant veges & fruit and collagen-containing broths
- Wear a daily broad spectrum sun block on your face winter and summer.
- Reduce superficial age spots with a series of beauty salon gentle fruit acid treatments –best done in winter
- Stimulate cellular production of collagen on your skin with a series of beauty salon electrical galvanic treatments
- Have a Skin Analysis and establish a daily skin care routine suited to
your skin type
- Take supplements known to beautify your skin
- Sweat through your skin for 15 mins daily – exercise, brisk walk, sauna, bath
- Get enough sleep – exhaustion shows in your face
- Take control of your stress, so it doesn’t manage you. Worry makes wrinkles!
Any questions, please leave me a note below.
Carol Bannister
Careem Wellness Spa
Naturopath, Beautician
cbannister | 
05 21st, 2009| 
