Many of us are preoccupied with making yourselves look younger – and understandably so, given how much our personal appearance can affect our confidence and self-esteem. There are many ways in which you can help to enhance your skin’s youthfulness to the optimum extent – but expect to have to make some sustainable lifestyle changes. The good news is that those changes don’t necessarily have to be significant, as the following examples show…
Nightly get at least seven hours of sleep
Where did the phrase “beauty sleep” come from? Probably the body’s ability to repair DNA damage while you slumber. Therefore, you can benefit from leaving your car in the mechanics’ garage for longer, to use an apt metaphor.
Elle advises that you aim to sleep for a minimum of seven hours on a nightly basis – and, if you often suffer insomnia, to avoid looking at your phone during the pre-slumber hour.
Oil be back… to eat some more fish
Fish must be onto something, as excessive dryness can endanger the youthfulness of your skin. You aren’t a fish, but you can get a sufficient amount of essential fatty acids by eating oily fish or taking high-grade fish-oil supplements, either of which would be healthy for your skin-cell-membranes.
Arrange to receive Botox injections
Botox is a trade name for botulinum toxin, a naturally occurring protein. Whatever you call it, injections of it can help you to smooth creases caused by squinting or frowning. Rest assured that, as The Telegraph says, Botox is very safe. However, its effectiveness will depend on the practitioner’s skill, so seek a reliable service like that available from Ten Dental. You are likely to see results within only about 14 days of your departure from the firm’s Botox clinic in London.
Rein in an excessive sugar intake
Are you daily consuming over 30g of sugar? This amount, equal to roughly four teaspoons, is more than necessary for a healthy adult. For this reason, keep track of extra sugar that might be covertly added even to supposedly healthy foods, like breakfast cereals and tinned soups, that you eat.
The Telegraph cites nutritionists and skin experts warning that too much sugar worsens glycation, a process responsible for speeding up skin ageing.
Regularly exercise
It doesn’t matter whether that physical activity is as casual as walking or as adventurous as scuba-diving or rock-climbing. In any of these instances, you will boost your circulation and so help your blood to reach the skin, which can look healthier as a result.
Give up the cigarettes
Smokers are often urged to quit, and if you are one of them, you now have yet another reason to ditch the cigarettes: they make skin oxygen-deprived and so accelerate its ageing. Due to collagen degrading more quickly in the bodies of smokers, wrinkles will form in higher number and speed. You probably don’t need us to remind you about many other risks of smoking…
All images Ola K by Pawel Kocan & Robert Losyk for Beauty SCENE – see the full shoot.
