15+ mistakes your skin isn't happy with.
Anti-aging skincare isn't about looking 20 years old when you are 60. It's about getting your skin to look healthiest and most youthful using holistic practices and natural ingredients that are truly good for your skin and body.
Unfortunately, some of the habits you practice daily may have the opposite effect on your skin. Your skin is sensitive to internal and external stressors, which means it can be impacted even by seemingly innocent activities.
Conversely, your skin is also highly receptive to positive change. If you identify and eliminate your lousy skincare habits, you can slow crow's aging to achieve a younger-looking complexion.
To help you on this path, here's a look at some of the worst daily habits that make your skin look older, including some lesser-known contributors to aging.
Everyday Habits That Make Your Skin Look Older
Getting Too Much Sun
Sunshine is not"excellent" for your health. Your body needs it to produce vitamin D, an essential nutrient.
However, sunlight does contain ultraviolet (UV) rays that can damage your skin. Overexposure to these UV rays is the #1 cause of premature skin aging. It results in photodamage, essentially damage at the cellular level that leads to visible signs like wrinkles, dark spots, roughness, etc.
While exposing your skin to sunlight for short periods is fine, you want to protect it if you plan to be outside for any time.
Physical protection— hat, sunglasses, etc.— is most effective, or you can opt for a non-nanoparticle zinc sunblock.
Smoking
Nothing about smoking is good for your health— or your skin. It is a massive accelerator of skin aging and makes many people look older than they are.
Studies have consistently shown that tobacco smoke degrades collagen and elastin, two essential skin proteins. It also increases free radical production, another major factor in skin aging. Because of this, smokers tend to have less elastic skin and more visible signs of aging.
Interestingly, research that involved identical twins found that smoking particularly increased wrinkles.
This is reason enough to quit smoking and avoid second-hand smoke as much as possible.
Using Toxic Skincare Products
Cosmetics and skin care products in the U.S. frequently contain chemicals banned over toxicity concerns in the EU and other countries. Some of these chemicals include known carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, and skin irritants (ironically).
These chemicals aren’t just hazardous to your health. They can also compromise the integrity of your skin barrier and open your skin up to degradation. Even “anti-aging" ingredients like alpha and beta hydroxy acids can make your skin more sensitive to UV radiation and photodamage.
Unfortunately, it's up to you as the consumer to constantly read labels to avoid the worst toxins in skincare. But your skin will appreciate the effort!
Make an appointment at Fountain of Youth Medical, because all the self-care in the world can get a big bump with some delightful botox or fillers, skin care services, PDO threads, and more.
Drinking Too Much Alcohol
There are a few sneaky ways alcohol can impact your complexion, none of which are good.
One of the most immediate effects alcohol has on your body and skin is dehydration. This means it sucks the water out of your skin, opening it up to wrinkles and a lifeless appearance. Alcohol can also cause inflammation and facial redness, which may become semi-permanent with daily drinking.
Heavy alcohol use typically leads to poor skin elasticity, under-eye bags, and increased wrinkling.
Excessive drinking is the worst for your skin. However, some experts recommend cutting back to a drink every other day or twice a week if you want a more youthful complexion.
Not Sleeping Enough
Sleep is when your body goes into deep repair and regeneration mode.."It's essential for your overall health but is also crucial to young-looking skin.
To give you a clearer picture, sleep deprivation is associated with accelerated skin aging, particularly wrinkles, fine lines, decreased elasticity, dark circles, and uneven skin tone. Not getting enough sleep also harms your skin barrier, which makes your skin more likely to dry.
The bottom line is that you should take your “beauty rest” seriously. Aim for 7-8 hours of quality sleep each night, and try to avoid sleeping with your face shoved into your pillow since this can cause facial lines and wrinkles.
Eating a Poor Diet
What you put in your body has a significant impact on the health of your skin. Specific vital vitamins and minerals are needed for healthy skin, and food is an essential source of these nutrients.
One of the best things you can do for your complexion is to avoid processed foods and refined sugar as much as possible. Most processed food lacks nutrients and may contain toxic additives. Overloading sugar contributes to a process known as glycation that eventually leads to collagen damage and loss of skin elasticity.
There’s no perfect skincare diet, but the best approach is to focus on consuming nutrient-dense whole foods, particularly plant-based ones.
Look at this list of the top foods for healthy, glowing skin if you need a place to start.
Not Staying Hydrated
If you tend to skimp on H20, you do your skin a significant disservice.
Water is a top nutrient for your skin to stay plump and healthy. It benefits every cell in your body and helps your skin stay hydrated at the deepest level. Without it, your complexion will quickly become dry and lifeless— and possibly itchy, red, and irritated.
Ensure you drink plenty of pure water throughout the day, even setting the alarm to remind you if you forget.
Using the Wrong Cleanser
Cleansing is an essential step in anti-aging skincare. It removes dirt, dead skin cells, and other debris that may be clogging up your pores, leaving your skin looking fresher and brighter.
Or at least, that there's how it's supposed to work.
Unfortunately, not all cleansers, especially facial ones, have ingredients that promote a youthful glow. Many of them strip your skin of healthy oils, all in the name of"cleansing.” This will leave your skin dry over time and more susceptible to pollutants, toxins, etc.
Even worse, certain surfactants frequently found in cleansers weaken skin barrier function and remain on your skin even after rinsing.
Avoid them by looking for natural soaps that contain plant-based moisturizers and cleansing ingredients.
Not Dealing with Stress
You're probably aware that chronic stress can significantly negatively impact your health. But what many people don't realize is how much stress also affects their skin.
When you feel stressed, your body releases certain hormones, including cortisol. These hormones should return to normal levels after the stressful event, but chronic stress breaks this pattern and can keep hormones elevated.
Researchers believe this is what affects both your health and your skin. This constant stress and hormone flux can cause numerous skin issues via the"brain-skin connection,” especially inflammation and premature aging.
The bottom line is that stress management is essential for your well-being and young-looking skin.
Over-Exfoliating
Exfoliation is an excellent example of something beneficial for your skin— until you overdo it.
When you exfoliate, you get rid of dead cells, encouraging skin cell regeneration and a brighter complexion. However, exfoliating too often can damage your skin barrier and make your skin sensitive, irritated, and dry.
Over-exfoliation also exposes your skin to increased damage from external stressors, including UV rays, a fast track to older-looking skin.
Experts usually agree that exfoliating 2-3 times a week is enough for most complexions. Those with sensitive skin may want to drop once a week or less.
Not Having a Nighttime Skincare Routine
A morning skincare routine can benefit your skin, but a nighttime regimen is essential. Remember, your skin does much of its repair work while you sleep, so you want to maximize these effects by getting your skin" ready for bed.”
One of the most important things you can do is remove all makeup traces before turning to bed. Makeup residue may not seem like a big deal, but it can clog pores and cause dead skin cells to build up, leading to dull and lifeless skin.
To magnify the benefits of sleep for your skin, you can also apply anti-aging products like eye cream, serums, and a moisturizer.
If you don't already have a routine, here's a simple yet highly effective anti-aging skincare regimen.
Applying Products in the Wrong Order
If you already have a skincare routine, that's aren't news for your skin. But here's a question: Are you applying your products in the correct order?
The right anti-aging products can be highly effective, but only when applied correctly. For example, if you put your moisturizer on before your targeted serum, the serum would mostly be useless because the moisturizer stops it from being absorbed.
In general, you should apply products with a lighter texture first and those that are heaviest last. This helps your skin absorb the maximum amount of ingredients and locks everything in.
A quick four-step routine would look like this:
Cleanser
Eye cream
Serum (or other targeted treatment)
Moisturizer
Being Hard on Your Eyes
Eye Skin
The skin around your eyes is very delicate. This means that it can quickly become dried out or irritated and is often one of the first areas of your face to show signs of aging (feet, under-eye bags, etc.).
Using harsh cleansers or other skin care products around your eyes makes it more likely that this skin area will become irritated and show signs of aging more quickly. Rubbing your eyes frequently tugs and stretches your skin, making bags and dark circles more visible.
Avoid touching the skin around your eyes as much as possible to combat this. Use a very gentle cleanser, and never scrub harshly. Also, moisturize with a dedicated eye cream rather than a general moisturizer.
Getting Too Much Blue Light Exposure
You may have heard by now that electronic devices emit blue light. This is concerning because of the discovery in recent years that blue light exposure in the evening can significantly disrupt your sleep-wake cycle, potentially causing severe sleep disruption.
Losing sleep, of course, hurts your skin, but there’s more to the story.
Blue light has been found to penetrate the deeper layers of your skin and is believed to contribute to premature aging. How much of an impact this has is still unknown, but it’s yet another reason to limit the use of electronics.
At the very least, install a blue light filter on your devices!
Squinting & Repeating Other Facial Movements
Any facial movement makes grooves in your skin that can become permanent wrinkles if you repeat that movement often enough.
Of course, you don'tit's want to become an expressionless statue to avoid wrinkles, but you may want to drop some specific habits.
Squinting is a habit that contributes to crow's feet and fine lines around your eyes (not to mention eye strain). It happens most often if you don't wear glasses or corrective lenses when you need them or stare at a screen for too long.
Sipping from a straw is a surprising way to cause or deepen wrinkles around your mouth, so go without when possible.
Forgetting About Your Neck, Chest, & Hands
Most anti-aging skincare products and practices target the face. This isn't surprising since our faces are exposed to sunlight, toxins, and other age accelerators that cause "wear and tear."
However, ignoring other areas of your skin that get nearly as much exposure as your face, especially your neck, chest, and hands, is a mistake. These specific areas of skin are also likely to show signs of aging, like wrinkles, dark spots, and roughness but rarely get as much care as your face does.
Consider applying anti-aging moisturizers and other products to more areas of the skin than just your face. And don't forget to apply sunscreen as needed to your neck, chest, and hands (and the rest of your body).
The Night Cream is the perfect way to finish a nightly skincare regimen (which you hopefully already have) and is USDA Certified Organic, which means zero toxins or synthetic ingredients.
And when all is said and done - make an appointment at Fountain of Youth Medical because all the self-care in the world can get a big bump with some delightful botox or fillers, skin care services, PDO threads, and more.