Lifestyle Choices

Not only does older skin need extra protection from the sun in order to avoid the formation of brown age spots, it needs protection in other ways, too. From excessive stress, for instance, which takes a heavy toll of a woman’s face when she is over forty. It is important to get enough sleep.

Both sebum production and the water content of the skin decrease with age, which makes it doubly important to keep your skin guarded from excessive dehydration. Many creams for older skin contain a sebum-like substance to make up for the gradual decline in the natural ability to hold water. Hormone creams, particularly those containing estrogen and estrogen-like substances, can be useful in combating aging too. They plump up skin that is losing much of its padding and form, thanks to their ability to increase the skin’s water-holding tendencies. They also soften the surface texture.

The maximum benefits from a hormone cream come about a month after you begin to use it, but they are only truly significant in skin that is genuinely aged. Hormones will do nothing for younger skin, and the benefits from using a hormone cream will only remain so long as you continue to use it. When it is stopped, your skin will gradually return to its previous state. But hormones are powerful substances, which affect the whole endocrine balance of a body. They have to be used with great care and are only available on prescription in the concentration necessary to be effective (10,000 iu of an estrogen-like hormone per ounce of cream).

ON SKIN PEELING, FACE-LIFTS, AND CHEMOSURGERY

Chemosurgery is sometimes recommended for the removal of fine lines on older skin. It involves the destruction of the top layer of the skin with a caustic solution—usually a 10 percent solution of resorcinol spread on and left for a specific length of time. In a week or so the crust formed falls off, revealing firmer, pink skin underneath. This is superficial chemical face peeling. Alternatively, the use of a combination of phenol—a derivative of carbolic acid—and other chemicals, which is applied three or four times to the face to burn away not only the epidermis but part of the dermis as well, is known as deep peeling. They are both supposed to stimulate the formation of fresher, younger-looking skin and also to eliminate many wrinkles.

Both superficial and deep peeling are painful, and the good results they bring in terms of younger-looking skin are short-lived. They usually last no more than a few months. Gradually the new skin loses its plumped-up look and returns to looking much as it did before. I have never seen an older woman who has had the operation and not regretted it later.

Another so-called cure for aging skin is dermabrasion—the planing operation that is supposed to minimize wrinkles much the same way except that it uses a motor-driven brush, rather than chemicals. In my experience, it is even less effective. The one thing both operations will do, though, is eliminate liver spots, freckles, and superficial scars such as some of the scars from acne. Neither can change the condition of the collagen fibers in the dermis on which depends the long-term look of your skin.

Plastic surgery can be useful, particularly if you are thin—it works far better on underweight women than the rest of us. You must get a good surgeon, for there is a real art to it. It is not just a mechanical job; and you must take good care of your face and the rest of your body both before and afterward. But it is not the cure-all that many women believe it to be. Your diet, level of physical activity, and general lifestyle have to be good in order to maintain the benefit you’ll get from it.

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Extra Care For Older Skin

• What Goes Into your Skin?
• Wrinkles and Facial Scars Cosmetic Surgery Skincare part 1
• Fresh Eyes Look
• Younger Looking Face
• Light can be Foe Instead of Friend
• Healthy Skin from the Inside
• Taking Care of Your Type of Skin
• The Craft of Skin Care Part 2
• Dry Skin, will drink lost of water help?
• Wrinkles and Facial Scars Cosmetic Surgery Skincare Part 3