how and why your skin ages

Throughout history, people have always gone to great lengths to keep from aging. Today this pursuit of youth has not has not changed. In fact, more than ever, methods, procedures and treatments to retain that “youthful beauty” are in abundance. Anti-aging products and services are consumed to the tune of billions of dollars in the hopes of slowing down the process of aging on the skin.

Unfortunately, People are generally uninformed as to how and why the our skin ages. People are mislead into buying products that only offer temporary, or disappointing results.

Because of this it is prudent to know how your skin changes over the years. If you understand how your skin ages, you can choose the correct course of action to try and retain your youthful looks for as long as possible.

There are two types of skin aging for. There is internal aging, which is caused by factors within your body, such as genes and overall body health; and external aging, which is caused by elements outside your body, such as the environment, sun, and lifestyle.

Internal aging
Aging is an inevitable process and our genetic make-up determines in part how we goes through that process. For some people, the signs of aging can become apparent earlier than other. For other lucky people, the onset of aging comes later in life. For most, first signs of skin aging start to appear in the mid-to late 20s.

As you get older, your skin’s ability to snap back into place (its elasticity) starts to decrease. This is due to your skin cells not regenerating as quickly as they used to. More dramatic signs of aging such are deeper wrinkles and sagging of skin cam start to appear in ones 30's.

Other indications of aging skin are thinner skin, loss of skin firmness, very dry skin due to the reduction of oil production and less sweat production which causes the skin surface not be cool properly.

External aging
Element besides your own genes determine how your skin ages. These are the things that you can actually control. Your actions and habits have a huge impact on the rate and amount your skin ages over your lifetime.

Your exposure to the sun
Due to climate change and a depleting ozone layer more harmful UV sun rays than ever are reaching us causing extensive skin damage and also impeding the skins ability to repair itself. Over the long term even several minutes a day of UV exposure can results in changes in your skin (brown spots, hyper pigmentation, squint lines and rough, dry skin) .A much more serious symptom of this exposure would be the emergence of skin cancer. Dermatologists refer to the reduced production of collagen which responsible for maintaining skins elasticity due to the sun as photo aging.

Your vulnerability to photo aging is determined by the amount of pigmentation in the skin as well as the amount of time you spend in the sun. Due to these aspects, fair-skinned people and those who spend a lot of time in the sun show much more effects of photo aging compared with those who are darker skinned and spend more time indoors.

Exercising your face
A regiment of exercising the face was once thought to help prevent wrinkles. It is now believed to actually cause facial wrinkles. exercising the muscles in your face results folding and creasing of the skin on the surface. As you age and the elasticity of your skin decreases, the folding and creasing does not snap back into place causing wrinkles on the face.

Cigarette Smoking
Smoking, as I'm sure you know, causes harm to the body internally but the damaged caused can be externally as well. Nicotine consumption causes changes at the cellular level resulting in faster breaking down of skin cells.

People who have been smokers for ten years of more quite often look a lot older than people of the same age who don't smoke. What makes this effect even more pronounced is the yellow discoloration of the skin caused by contact with nicotine on the skin surface. The good news is that the effects of smoking on the skin can be reversed. People who have given up smoking had often shown improvements in their skin soon after quitting.

The signs of getting older eventually show on everyone. We do what we can to delay them so that we can look and feel our best. But the main thing is to not get too stressed out about getting older. We had to accept the new stages in our lives and be happy.