Seven Ways to Slow Aging

Despite the fact that age brings wisdom and experience to the table, nobody wants to look as though they have gotten older. Aging is one of those natural cycles that most of us fear or resent. You can stop celebrating birthdays, receive ample medical treatment or surgery, and you can even start lying about your age, but time will still pass and you will still look older. How quickly you start to age and how old you look, however, is more within your power than you think it is. Medical science has yet to come up with an anti aging formula that rivals the power that we each have within us to look and feel younger, prevent aging prematurely, and to even reverse some of the natural effects we are already experiencing.

While using your own power to change the way you are aging isn’t as simple as taking a pill or making an appointment with a plastic surgeon, the results are not only longer term but are also good for your entire body. A face lift, which isn’t likely to make you look better but more likely the same age with a face so tight you look uncomfortable, only works on the face. You have the power to help your entire body turn back the clock. There are no miracle cures. There are, however, seven simple steps to making your life more youthful and turning your daily life into one that shows up on your face like you secretly found that magic anti aging pill everyone is looking for.

Step One: How Does Your Life Wear on Your Face?

Check your face in the mirror several times today. What expressions do you carry on a regular basis? Aging can happen when we least expect it. When we are struggling with negative emotions, we tend to feel older which results to anxiety stress . Then all of a sudden we realise that our face is reflecting that sudden burst of age that we feel inside. Over time, the muscles in our face can be trained to hold our face down in a wrinkled and trodden position or in a uplifted and lighter position. This training of the muscles happens from within us.

When we are not happy it shows all over our face. While our face might not specifically “freeze like that” our emotions etch the fine lines and wrinkles into our face faster than we might expect. One year in your mid thirties can age you ten years if you are depressed, angry, sad, overwhelmed, and carry a look of downtrodden angst. Not to mention that these feelings also contribute to certain health problems like chronic pain, fatigue, and cardiovascular issues that also help us age faster.

When we are happy and content, our face carries a nice, even, relaxed look to it that makes us look younger. Happy faces do not gave the same etched lines in them that unhappy faces tend to. While happiness is not a cure for everything, the happier you are the healthier you tend to be and the younger you will look.

Step Two: Kick the Butts and the Drinks

Let’s assume that you are aware of the health risks associated with smoking and drinking and yet you have not chosen to stop these two basic vices. Perhaps knowing that the chronic deprivation of skin oxygen that happens every single time you light a cigarette could encourage you to reconsider. The way that the lips form around the tip of a cigarette, help to create the first of many wrinkles to come. Repetitive action causes facial wrinkles. Just as frowning can cause frown lines, sucking on a cigarette causes lip wrinkles. Smoking also deprives the body of ingested nutrients. Even if you use dietary factors to change the wrinkles in your face, the cigarettes you smoke wipe out more than half of the dietary intake of nutrition . This is also why smokers tend to develop more joint problems and succumb to disease faster and more often than non smokers.

Drinking too much stains the skin from within. The chemical reaction of alcohol in the body creates a fantastic biological environment for ruptured blood vessels and under developed hormones that can help your skin appear saggy, wrinkled, and aged. Drinking alcohol in excess is one of the most damaging things you can do to your body, the effects just aren’t as obvious as they are on a smoker’s body. If you do both, smoke and drink, you are likely to age your body ten years for every eighteen months you engage in these activities.

Drug use, especially narcotic pain reliever drug abuse , can lead to rapid aging in a short period of time. Many narcotic medications have a negative effect on the GI tract and condemn the body’s nutrient absorption rate to about half. Elimination problems hold toxins in the body and contribute to the health and aging factors associated with getting older.

Step Three: Get Smart about the Weather

Fun in the sun can make you initially feel younger. There is something very youthful about running along a beach barefoot, engaging in those summertime water activities, and lounging in the sun on a fresh green bed of grass. However, these very activities can age you quickly if you do not care for your skin. Tanned skin is skin that has been damaged. Using high level of SPF sunscreen can save your summer fun while saving your face. Exposure to the sun creates a leathered, wrinkled face that can’t be saved once it passes the point of permanent damage. Skin cancer has made sun awareness a more common factor, but age spots and sun damage are still a leading form of age acceleration. In most areas, SPF 35 is not strong enough. SPF ratings are to determine how long you can stay in the sun before the damage equals that of unprotected skin. Those who love the outdoors should be using a daily application or two of SPF 75 or even 90. Sometimes you can only find these levels of protection in sun screen made for babies.

Winter fun can help make those short and cold days much more tolerable. Who wants to hibernate for six months? The sun can reflect off the snow and add to your summer skin damage. The cold and the wind have a strong drying and chapping effect on the skin that can cause damage all on its own. Winter skin is usually dry, cracked, and easily thinned. Use a protective moisturiser. For ski, snowboarding, and other winter sport enthusiasts, a coating of lip balm all over the face can help form a layer of protection between you and the damaging cold.

No matter which season brings you out of the house for some fun, find yourself a good anti aging moisturizer made from natural ingredients. You want to restore the elastin and the collagen in the skin and add in antioxidants. A moisturized face is less likely to show signs from playing outside, and the antioxidants can actually help prevent further damage.

Step Four: You Are What You Eat

What you ingest shows on the outside of your body. If you want a youthful body that is firm and a face that looks fresh and youthful, avoid many of the foods that have become staples on our homes and restaurants. Choosing whole wheat flour over white flour can help eliminate a huge source of foods that add to our body’s natural inflammation. Slimming down the servings of refined sugar can help keep your entire body a little tighter and prevent the development of unhealthy fats. Choosing a diet that is loaded with natural antioxidants and bioactive nutrients will show in your face. The more you care for the inside of your body, the more it shows on the outside of your body. The better you care for the inside of your body, the less the aging process plagues you.

Removing all fast foods and prepared fried foods from your diet eliminates not only a lot of unhealthy fats, but it also helps eliminate chemicals that can help you age faster with more aging evidence written all over your skin.

Step Five: Maintain a Healthy Weight

A little additional weight can actually help you look younger. If you are too thin your fatty tissue in your face suffers and your skin is no longer a youthful, plump, smooth surface. Plump skin is necessary for deterring the wrinkling process and maintaining a healthy weight can keep your face looking like you prefer. Thin faces, especially those that have been in the sun or cold too often, tend to look a little bit like wrinkled skeletons that have no shape. The cheeks and the neck are a good indicator for determining age. If your cheeks are hollow or flat then you do not have enough facial fat. If your neck sags and your chin tends to waddle, then you are also suffering from a lack of facial fat. Most of us believe that the thinner we are the more attractive we are. A woman in her fifties that is about 5 ½ feet tall should weight between 135 and 145 pounds, depending on muscle tone. That same woman looked healthy in her twenties if she weighed about 125 pounds.

Step Six: Choose Natural over Chemicals

We use chemicals in almost everything we do, including showering, applying facial enhancements like wrinkle creams and make up, and throughout our daily habits . These chemicals can be absorbed through the skin and add to our wrinkle tally. Natural products can also be absorbed through the skin but because you are absorbing natural elements the damage isn’t nearly as intense. Chemical enhancements provided by health care providers, like facial injections, can be more damaging in the long run than they are helpful in the short term.

Step Seven: Stop Acting Your Age

Where does fun fit in your life? Making time for fun reduces stress. Stress is a huge factor in wearing your life on your face and showing all the small signs of aging we develop. The more stress you carry on your shoulders the more it shows. Most of us left fun and play time behind in our childhoods because we have to be responsible adults. However, you can be a responsible adult and make time for daily fun to help burn off some of that age increasing stress.

People who have more fun look and feel younger. Often, the exercise that is involved with having fun helps to increase blood flow, oxygenation, and muscle tone. All of these factors help to significantly reduce the look of age. By taking some time to have fun; your overall appearance will start to change as your stress reduces itself. During those responsible moments you are more likely to be more focused and less overwhelmed and your worries will not be so demanding, all because you choose to have a little fun during the day. This is certainly one of the more enjoyable anti aging prescriptions available, and the results are undeniable.