Lifestyle Choices

Nothing betrays your age like the state of your skin. When you are young, it is thick, glowing, soft, and elastic. As the years go by, a number of changes take place. The thickness of the skin diminishes by half. It loses its firmness. First, expression lines and minor discolorations form, then these tiny imperfections gradually become wrinkles and blotched skin, which is no longer able to retain water as it once could–skin that has lost its elasticity and turned crepey and old-looking. How fast all this happens depends not only on your genetic inheritance but also on the internal state of your body, your stress levels, and the care and protection you provide for your skin from the outside.

The aging process in your skin is really no different from anywhere else in the body, except that it can be faster. This is because, first, the skin’s cells tend to divide more often than most other kinds of cells, so genetic mutations are passed on more rapidly, and second, because your skin has to put up with so many external insults from what it is exposed to environmentally.

At the center of the aging process in the skin is a disruption of the genetic material in the cells—the DNA and RNA. This leads to corresponding degenerative changes in the collagen and elastin fibers of the dermis. These changes are brought on by many factors. Two of the most important are the presence of free radicals—highly reactive chemical groups that combine with cell material and cause damage both to the cell membranes and to the genetic material—and ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Both these factors cause the protein in the dermis to harden and thicken so that collagen fibers twist and birkd together in a process called cross-linking. Because the firm, wrinkle-free look of skin is dependent on the collagen in it remaining flexible and orderly, when this process takes place the skin begins to sag and wrinkle from habitual expression patterns being etched into skin tissue no longer resilient enough to resist them.

Inadequate nutrition, which leaves the cell membranes particularly vulnerable to free-radical attack—particularly a diet high in unsaturated fats —also plays an important part in aging, as does a diminished blood supply from poor circulation to the tissues as a result of physical inactivity. Finally, some cell loss and damage associated with aging are probably direct results of environmental factors such as air pollution, smoking, and drugs and alcohol in the body. All of these degenerative changes on a cellular level contribute to your skin’s losing its elasticity as well as its ability to hold water.

It is firm, healthy collagen and the skin’s water-holding ability that give a face its youthful contours and cushiony feel. Eventually the loss of tone and firmness from these internal alterations and a diminishing hydration results in sagging, lines, and wrinkles. Meanwhile metabolism slows down in the cells so that it is increasingly difficult for them to get adequate essential nutrients, while the elimination of cellular wastes also gets less efficient. The rate at which old cells die and new ones are born is also much slower. Gradually the skin becomes sluggish and loses its vital glow, and the epidermis becomes uneven in thickness, discolored, rough, and lined.

To slow down this process and to keep a young, healthy skin as long as possible, you have first to retain a young, healthy body. This is a total, ongoing process depending on good nutrition, stress control, exercise, and protection from the environment. There aren’t any shortcuts. But the good news is this: These skin aging changes appear to be not so dependent on the passage of time as they were once believed to be. There is much therefore you can do to retard them.

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