Tips for Anti Aging Skin Care

Mar 14, 2023 - Zubaida -

An anti-aging skincare routine should focus on three major factors which need to be addressed, you can call them ‘the three Ts’ of skin aging. They are:

Tone
Texture
Tightness

If you study how a face ages, there are gradual changes in all three factors. Let’s look at the best skincare routine for each of the three Ts.

1. Uneven skin tone
This can look like hyperpigmentation in the form of dark patches or spots, as well as redness.

Brown
A woman who has significant sun damage, hyperpigmentation, and varying skin tone over her face will be perceived as older than the same face with a more uniform skin tone. Hyperpigmentation can also be caused by pollution, hormones, certain drugs, and the skin’s reaction to harsh clinical treatments like peels, intense pulsed light (IPL), and lasers.

Red
Excessive redness of the face may be caused by the sun damaging blood vessels (called capillaries) in the dermis. They are the thinnest blood vessels in our skin and are responsible for bringing nutrients to our skin cells and removing the rubbish so we really need to look after them! They are often referred to as ‘broken capillaries’, but this is incorrect, these capillaries are far from broken. They are in fact stretched and floppy rather than thin and elastic. As a result, the blood in them is more visible because they’re so much wider. They mainly occur around the nose, cheeks and chin, and are usually caused by the sun causing free radical damage to the blood vessels.

Visible capillaries can also be caused by skin injury, excessive damage from attacking your pimples, or harsh microdermabrasion treatments if your skin is sensitive. The best way to treat these spidery red vessels is to have lasers or
IPL treatments by a dermatologist or qualified therapist, and the best prevention is to avoid sun exposure and use ingredients that
keep your blood vessels nice and healthy. Vitamin A is a shining star here. Another cause of excessive redness in the face is a skin condition called rosacea.

2. Uneven Skin Texture
If you compare an apple to a lemon. The apple looks smooth and the lemon is dimply and uneven because of the way light reflects off their surfaces. It’s like that with skin. If our skin texture is even and smooth, the light reflects off it evenly and it looks more luminous. But if our skin has a rough and uneven surface, the light will reflect off it in different directions and it will look uneven. Think of enlarged pores, wrinkles, crepiness, dryness, and flakiness. This is because our skin is losing collagen, elastin, and hyaluronic acid, and our skin processes, like cell turnover, are becoming slow and lazy.

There are many skin treatments that can address uneven skin texture by triggering our skin cells to make collagen, including skin needling, laser, and fractional treatments. Chemical peels are also an excellent choice for improving the surface texture of
crepey skin and enlarged pores. All cosmeceuticals that address collagen and elastin production will help improve skin texture, and alpha hydroxy acids (AHAs) and beta hydroxy acids (BHAs) are also great because they help shed the old, flaky cells that aren’t reflecting light evenly. BHAs like salicylic acid will also pull oil and gunk out of those blocked pores, so if the skin around the pore is still nice and stretchy, the pore will rebound and your pores will look smaller. If the pore isn’t elastic enough (through aging or sun damage), you will need ingredients to help with your collagen and elastin production.

3. Tightness
As we age our skin becomes lax and less elastic. Loss of skin tightness means loss of firmness and volume. Our skin loses firmness when there’s less collagen. You might say our foundations are gradually collapsing. The other thing that’s happening as we age is that we’re losing bone mass. We all know that we become shorter as we get older. Our spine becomes more compact and our bones shrink. But did you know that our skull also shrinks? Unfortunately our skin doesn’t shrink with it! This is another reason that the skin on our face becomes looser as we age. Sadly, there’s no cosmeceutical ingredient that can address this. However, for those looking for a non-surgical solution, injectable fillers with hyaluronic acid are a great option for adding volume, especially to the cheeks and temples. I strongly suggest you choose your injector wisely and really make sure you’re both on the same page about the results you want. You also need to be realistic and not expect to peel away 20 years with a couple of syringes of filler. The aim is to restore the lost volume over time, not to alter your appearance and look like a caricature of yourself. Just as with all treatments and skincare routines, the aim is maintenance, not drastic change.

For more subtle improvements in skin tightness, we can use cosmeceuticals to increase collagen and improve hyaluronic acid
production. When you increase collagen and hyaluronic acid, the deep dermal layer of the skin thickens and volume is added to the skin.