FOREVER YOUNG: 5 EASY WAYS TO LOOK YOUNGER

There’s nothing worse than looking older than your age but you might be surprised to learn there are some free, easy ways to prevent you looking your age…

A curious fact about ageing is that many of the signs of ageing we later learn to dread like fine lines, pigmented skin, loss of elasticity, hair greying and thinning donâ rear their ugly faces until MANY years after the behaviours that gave rise to them. Take smoking for instance. We can smoke and smoke and smoke in our teens and still look hot and feel we are getting away with it only to discover in our mid twenties that we look 5 -10 years older than our friends. What you do now will show up on your face many years later.

The first thing we can do is recognize our enemies’ sunlight, alcohol, fatty foods, smoking and last but not least caffeine. As we shall see, each damages us in different and not always predictable ways.

Sunlight

Ahhh summer. Nice isn’t it? Not if you want to avoid premature ageing! We all know UV damages our skin and gives us cancer blah, blah, blah.Basically your face looks as it good as it does when you are young because it contains lots of collagen which keeps your skin nice and elastic. When your skin loses that elasticity lines begin to develop and we start to look old.

Probably a major reason we don’t take UV seriously is that we can’t see it; UV has a wavelength shorter than that of visible light. Worse UV comes in several forms. When we talk about UV we usually are talking about UVB, its what the SPF factor on your sunscreen protects you against. So what you ask? Well sunscreen only protects you against UVB and only moderately against UVA. This is because UVB can be easily measured but UVA cannot. This matters because UVA penetrates deeper into your skin than UVB and is believed to be a major contributor to the emergence of lines and wrinkles.

So what can we do? Well the best thing to do is STAY out of the sun completely but then you might suffer from vitamin D deficiency which is not good either. Realistically avoid the sun between 10am-4pm if you can. Big hats are a good idea but are hard to pull off without looking sad. Wear sunscreen everyday and reapply every 2 hours Why? Your sunscreen dissipates with sweat and can vary in its coverage after that dip in the sea. Wear sunscreen daily even to work since UV penetrates the glass in your car whilst you are driving to work. UV laughs at cloudy days since clouds DO NOT reduce UV exposure so not wearing sunscreen on that overcast day is not doing you any good.

Avoid ski slopes. Just joking but reflections from surfaces still will burn and age your skin so sailors for instance should always wear sunscreen to reduce reflected UV light off the water. Slopping on that t shirt does very little to UVB and UVA light. Better to buy a sunscreen with both UVB and UVA protection. Such sunscreens will have compounds like titanium oxide (sounds cool does not it?) that prevents UVA light penetrating your skin.

Avoid tanning salons. Really! Tanning would not make you any prettier just a whole lot older later in life when you really want to hide your age.

Skin color plays a role too. If you are dark or olive skinned take a bow… the sun will do much less damage to your skin but if your blond, blue eyed or red haired, watch out, you’re fair skin makes you extra vulnerable to damage from UV. That tan you think makes you look sexy is your body releasing melanin to darken your skin and protect it from UV damage. Problem is if you tan too much and you’re fair skinned, you won’t just burn but will be creating little spots (excess melanin) that darken with time and emerge more and more as we age. Worse people call them “age” or “liver” spots. Effectively you are tanning yourself towards freckles. Sounds hot doesn’t it?

Alcohol

The reason many of us went out with… well let’s not go there… Fun as drinking is, too much of it can also make you look old and fast! Like it or not there is a clear and proven link between alcohol and premature ageing. Drink enough and you will damage blood vessels in the skin giving you that much desired red flushed look. Even worse keep drinking excessively and broken blood vessels will start appearing on your skin giving you a red mottled complexion. Hot! So how much is too much? I hope your seated…take a deep breath, you’re not going to like this – just one drink a day for the ladies and up to two drinks a day for guys. No one said it would be easy but think how much money you’ll save!

Smoking

It’s funny how a lot of us started smoking to look older and that exactly what smoking will do to your appearance. Basically smoking puts a fine layer of filth on your skin. Without this being removed it contributes to premature ageing to say nothing of smokers’ lines around your mouth, a sickly yellow complexion, increased wrinkling, risk of cancer and the fact that if your about 16 you just look like a try hard. As they say be careful what you wish for, you might just get it!

Fatty foods

These basically make you fat and whilst being overweight won’t necessarily make you look older often it does. Why? Well when you’re young ever notice that you don’t have big cheeks or a line or crease running from your nose to each corner of your mouth in a broadly triangular shape? This is called the nasiolabial fold and most us get them as we get older. In fact it’s a major difference between looking under 25 or over 25. Unless you’re overweight as a child you won’t have then till you’re in your mid twenties. Some people actually look better with this line but most don’t
which might explains why that spunk you met all those years ago doesn’t look very nice now. Nasiolabial folds really do dramatically change the way you look. They can be avoided. Keeping the weight off helps eliminates this line and eliminating these lines makes us look young. Don’t diet too much tough or the line will appear as well, just don’t be overweight or too thin. Avoiding sunlight helps too since the loss of collagen from UV exposure is a major factor in the emergence of this line.

Still don’t believe me? Well a recent 2005 study showed wait for it, that someone who smokes and is overweight at 30 can feel and LOOK like a 40 year old. So avoid those fatty foods.

Caffeine
There’s little hard evidence that caffeine does you any harm but look at it a different way. No one denies lack of sleep ages you, hence the phrase “I’m getting in by beauty sleep”. Caffeine hurts you by letting you cut corners. Where you might just go to sleep after a busy week, caffeine lets you hit the town and go to work 4 hours later. Sounds good doesn’t it? Well its not. Your skin needs time to rejuvenate, shed old skin cells and replace them; that’s what sleep is for, to repair your body. Don’t sleep. Don’t repair. That’s why models sleep as much as possible; keeps them looking young, avoids panda eyes- you get the idea…

Caffeine can dehydrate us and this is very bad for our skin. Again that’s why models drink lots of water. It cleanses your body, makes your skin glow; caffeine does the opposite. Finally no one denies stress visibly ages you. Well, caffeine elevates cortisol so avoiding caffeine can help you reduce your stress and this reduces ageing. Yoga can help too. Clears the mind you see, lets you relax…

So if we are serious about looking young, cut out the caffeine and sleep when you’re tired. Still want to party? Go ahead but take a nap like your grandpa first. Don’t tell anyone; they’ll laugh but if you sleep before you party you will look better than your friends as it gets later in the night and you will look better in the morning too. You will be amazed how refreshed you can feel at say 4 in the morning; try it you will be surprised.

So there you have it… Don’t drink. Avoid the sun, don’t eat any fats, no caffeine and don’t smoke. Doesn’t sound like much fun does it? But I bet partying into your mid twenties when all your mates look thirty doesn’t sound too bad either. It won’t be easy but think of how much money you will save (no drinking, smoking, coffee) and how nice it would be to still have “options” rather than settling with what you have because you look too old to get better…