Lifestyle Choices

The third part of everyday skin care is simple: Your skin needs to be protected from the sun. This does not just mean when you are lying on the beach, either; it means all the time. For ultraviolet light is the worst destroyer and ager of the skin that you are ever likely to encounter.

Long-term exposure to ultraviolet light brings about degenerative changes in the deep layers of the skin that until recently were thought to be an unavoidable part of the aging process: cross-linking and bunching of the collagen fibers and genetic damage to the skin’s cells that cause it to lose tone, to wrinkle, to sag, and to discolor. Heavy exposure to the sun’s light at the age of eighteen will result in early wrinkling, between twenty-five and forty. This is an unfortunate law of nature that nothing can change—except, of course, wearing some form of adequate sunscreen on the skin. And not just when you are out on the beach lying in the sun, but all the time. For these ultraviolet rays, which are dangerous to the skin and age it, don’t come just from being directly exposed to the sun’s light. They also come from the sky and from reflections off water and off the earth. In fact, the amount of ultraviolet radiation from the sky is greater than that coming directly from the sun itself. So your skin needs protection all the time.

Which sunscreen product you choose depends on how much light you are exposed to. There is more in Florida or Sydney than in London, Paris, or Dublin. (This is the main reason why the Irishwoman tends to be in such better condition and look much younger than her American sister.) Many makeup products now include a sunscreen in their formation (read labels). There are also a couple of water-resistant sun lotions which themselves make excellent moisturizers-cum-sunscreens for everyday wear, since they happen to be water-in-oil emulsions. By choosing one, you will obtain a dual-purpose product. Wear it all the time, day in day out, winter and summer, so that you never expose your unprotected skin to the light. Twenty years from now, when you compare your face with a friend’s of the same age who hasn’t used a sunscreen constantly, you will be pleased to find that you look a good ten years younger than she does. I know there is a tendency for women to be particularly negligent in this area of skin care because wearing a sunscreen is entirely preventative and so you feel no immediate benefits from it. But this simple habit will do more to preserve skin youth and beauty than any other external action you can take.

These three things—cleansing, protection from moisture loss, and a sunscreen—are all there is to basic skin care. They are simple, and inexpensive to carry out, and the benefits they bring when used regularly every day cannot be measured in any amount of money.

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