If you’ve been a little concerned about how old you look in the mirror these last couple of weeks, then you just might be right. Well, not old like Grandma old, but it is highly possible that your body has started some ew phase of the inevitable aging process and your appearance is about to be at the receiving end of it, unless……
Unless of course, you manage it well. So now you’re thinking:
Wait! Am I getting old? Oh God, what’s going to happen to me? Is this even right? How come I’ve started aging?
Breathe easy, aging is an inevitable process and yes, if you’re thinking you’re too young, think again, as science has shown that signs of aging can start as early as in your twenties. How fast we age or experience the signs of aging however varies. This is because factors like age, heredity, and stress can play significant roles in making us look our age, younger or older than we actually are.
Whatever the case may be, early intervention and management is key to slowing down the signs of aging and prevent leaving a life plagued undesirable facial features in the coming years. Here are 4 early signs of aging and a couple of techniques that you can do to keep your youthful look.
Dark circles and eye bags: A host of under-eye issues can be the first few signs of early aging. These dark circles also called “raccoon eyes” along with eye bags can arise from a number of factors including insomnia, lack of enough sleep, stress and physical trauma. In cases like these, the skin around the area might have lost their strength and elasticity thereby dropping and forming bags beneath the eye. Crying for long times can also cause dark circles and spots around and beneath the eyes.
A couple of tips to help manage and possible reverse these signs include:
- Get at least 6-8 hours of sleep daily
- Sleep on your back as sleeping on your stomach can force fluids beneath your eyes via gravitational force
- Try out some retinol-based eye creams with skin-thickening hormones
- Opt for excellent filler solutions available to help prevent the skin thinning by using hyaluronic acid fillers.
Hyperpigmentation
Hyperpigmentation can be a sign of early aging. The phenomenon occurs when there is a discord in the skin coloration that allows certain areas of the skin to appear darker than other spots. The condition is not race-dependent and can affect anyone.
Having uneven facial tones and colors can quickly make you appear older than you are. Luckily, a couple of treatments are available in creams, masks, peels and laser treatments.
Nasolabial folds: You may know nasolabial folds as smile lines. These creases run around the corners of your mouth to the side of your nose. And while this isn’t caused by a whole lot other than smiling, the older you grow, you may find that these lines have decided to make your face their home whether you are smiling or not. Nasolabial folds will typically appear in women from their late twenties and will first appear as subtle lines that deepen as time goes on.
Juvederm and Restylane are excellent solutions for minimizing smile lines especially if you take the treatment as early as you start to notice these lines.
Crow’s feet: Crow’s feet are also called laugh lines and are nothing more than the wrinkles appearing in the outer corners of our eyes. These wrinkles appear as a result of the loss of skin elasticity and the inability of the skin to return to its initial place after being put through a wide array of facial motions such as smiling or laughing.
As we age, our skins begin to lose their collagen and elastin proteins. Smile after smile, laugh after laugh, our skin loses this elasticity and the skin around the eyes is one of the few areas to experience wrinkling borne out of this elasticity loss.
Depending on how much you care for your skin, stress, and experience, crow’s feet can begin to appear as early as in your twenties. Other people who do not take adequate care can even begin to experience this in their teenage years.
The best treatments for crow’s feet is the application of neurotoxins that help to relax the underlying muscles, thereby lessening the wrinkles and preventing the formation of new ones in the future.
What to do about early facial aging?
The key to staying youthful and beautiful is to ensure that your actual age at least correlates with your apparent age or better still, your apparent age is lesser than your actual age. The factors that cause early facial aging can be managed especially lack of rest, sleep and stress. Other factors include sun damage, smoking, and diet. Here are some other insights to help you fight back early facial aging:
- Protect your skin from harsh sun rays: Sun has powerful UV rays that can have an aging look on your face. Wear sunscreen to protect from the effects of sun rays.
- Avoid smoking: Tobacco, nicotine and other cigarette-based compounds and the smoke itself have been shown to promote the appearance of eye bags and wrinkles around the mouth.
- Get more skin vitamins: From both diet and cosmetics, opt to buy creams that are fortified in Vitamins A, C and D. Eat fruits that are rich in pigments, minerals, nutrients and vitamins A, B, and C to boost your skin texture, firmness, elasticity, hydration and thickness.
- Microdermabrasion and Microneedling: Microdermabrasion is a technique that uses a mechanical means of scrubbing to remove the outermost layer of the skin that primarily consists of dead cells. The result is a smoother surface that is youthful and an acceleration of the body’s natural exfoliation procedure. Microneedling is a procedure that use tiny needles (microneedles) to create punctures on your skin. These holes promote the stimulation of collagen growth and open up pores that allow applied creams and serums to sink to parts where they will be most effective.
