How to reduce those wrinkles

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

A LOT of good can come with age -- things like wisdom, grandchildren, and senior citizen discounts. But there are a few not-so-terrific things, like gray and wrinkles.

Gray hair, of course, can be touched up with a little dye - simple enough. Wrinkles, however, are an altogether different story. No, you can't iron them out. And you can't simply wish them away like Peter Pan or Dorian Gray.

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But what causes wrinkles? "As you age, your skin makes less oil," the Mayo Clinic said. "Its outer layer (epidermis) becomes rough and dry. In the underlying dermis, two fibrous proteins that keep your skin taut -- collagen and elastin, which are both important for maintaining skin integrity -- gradually diminish. Your skin first starts to wrinkle, then sag."

In some instances, secretion of skin pigment (melanin) becomes irregular, resulting in blotchy skin.

Medical experts said sun exposure and smoking speed up the aging process of a person. "Too much sun eventually does the same thing to your skin that it does to dried fruit: It shrivels it up," The Doctors Book of Home Remedies said.

This is especially true today, as depletion of the earth's protective ozone layer allows more of the sun's harmful rays to reach your vulnerable skin, maintains Dr. Norman Brooks, an assistant clinical professor of dermatology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

What about smoking? When a team of researchers in California looked at facial wrinkling, they found that the risk of moderate/severe wrinkling for current male smokers was 2.3 times that of males who never smoked. With women, the risk is 3.1 times.

The risks become evident only with middle age, as facial wrinkling was rare among smokers and non-smokers below the age of 40. "Male former smokers had no increased risk for facial wrinkling but with female former smokers, the risks for wrinkling were still two times that of females who had never smoked," reported the publication, Health Alert.

Smoking, experts said, tends to decrease blood supply to the small blood vessels under your skin, which could exacerbate wrinkling, said Dr. Gerald Imber, an attending plastic surgeon at New York Hospital-Cornell University Medical Center.

Medical experts contacted by The Doctors Book of Home Remedies say there are a number of strategies to keep a person from looking old and to reduce those unwanted wrinkles. Here are some of them:

Use sunblock. Whenever you're out in the sun, the use of a sunscreen -- the higher the sun protection factor (SPF) number, the better - is advised, says Dr. Stephen Kurtin, an assistant professor of dermatology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. To be most effective in battling wrinkles, sunscreens should be applied to the skin at least one-half hour before going out and reapplied after swimming.

Scrunch not. It's okay to occasionally make a funny face, but constantly furrowing your brow, squinting, or puckering your lips will, in time, create wrinkles or make those you already have worse, says Dr. Marianne O'Donoghue, an associate professor of dermatology at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Hospital in Chicago, Illinois.

Keep pillows away from your face. "Watch out for sleep wrinkles," said Dr. Jeffrey Binstock, assistant clinical professor of dermatologic surgery at the University of California, San Franciso. These are wrinkles that are caused by pressing your face into the pillow at night. If you're guilty of this habit, learn to sleep on your back instead, or experiment to find a position where your face is not pressing the pillow. You may see some of your smaller lines fade away.

Exercise regularly. People who are generally in good shape seem to have healthier, more elastic skin than those who aren't. One Finnish study found that middle-aged athletes had skin that was denser, thicker, and stronger than that of a similar group of non-exercisers. The elastic quality that allows the skin to spring back to its original shape after being stretched was also significantly better in the athletes.

Eat right. Vitamins and minerals are important to maintaining youthful skin. Among the most important are the B-complex vitamins (found in beef, chicken, eggs, whole wheat and enriched flour, and milk, among other foods) and vitamins A and C (found in fresh fruit and vegetables). Dr. O'Donoghue says the best foods for healthy skin are green leafy vegetables, carrots, and fresh fruit.

Use a moisturizer. No moisturizer on the market can reverse the aging process. If you have dry skin, however, the use of a moisturizing lotion can hide some of the smaller wrinkles that form on the surface, says Dr. Kurtin. He emphasizes that it is important to dampen the skin first before applying moisturizing cream.