A Guide to Anti-Aging Skincare

Skin changes as you age, becoming more wrinkled, dry, and flecked with age spots. It also becomes thinner as it loses fat, making it less plump and less efficient at healing.

Fortunately, there are ways to minimize the effects of aging skin. In some cases, you can even restore elasticity and smoothness in the skin that has lost some of its luster. How you ask?

Simple, work with nature, not against it! Many natural forces, like the sun, weather, and hormones can influence our skin’s health as we get older. Certain preventative measures give your skin its best chance at staying supple. Without further ado, here are Couture Med Spa’s top tips for minimizing skin aging!

Skin Care Tips

Reduce sun exposure

Ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun is one of the biggest villains of skin aging. And we’re out in it every day! In fact, it’s estimated that the sun is responsible for 90 percent of skin aging. That’s because sun exposure deteriorates your skin’s proteins, leading to wrinkling and a less youthful appearance.

Proper sun protection can mitigate damage from UV rays. For example, time spent under the sun matters just as much as UV ray strength. If you must spend a long time out in the sun, wearing sunscreen and protective clothing makes a huge difference in your skin’s health.

Another reason to wear sunscreen? People who live in regions with bright sunlight all year naturally have a higher risk of skin cancer. Spending time outside for several hours without sunscreen or proper clothing further increases that risk.

Keep Your Skin Hydrated

It’s important to drink water every day, but did you know that your skin is thirsty, too? Especially if you spend a lot of time in the sun, look for products that attack dry, dull skin and reintroduce lost moisture.

There’s a reason hydrated skin looks good; it glows, has an even tone, and is healthy. Hydrated skin is resilient, durable, and has what it takes to fight off irritation from foreign substances.

A good moisturizer contains two essential elements. The first is humectants, like hyaluronic acid and glycerin, which hydrate the skin using water drawn from the air. The second is emollients, like mineral oil, to keep the moisture locked in by strengthening the lipid barrier. Couture Med Spa offers products with both of these ingredients!

When it comes to skincare, every extra step can make a big difference. So, take your hydration a step further and try incorporating a moisturizing body wash whenever you take a shower.

Brush off dead skin cells

If you don’t already exfoliate, you’re missing out on a critical opportunity to keep your skin smooth and radiant. Use a scrub or a body wash containing gentle exfoliating beads and buff away the debris on your skin during every shower. The dead skin cells will scrub off, and your soft, glowing skin will shine once again.

Using a wash with alpha and beta hydroxy acids makes exfoliation even more manageable because these acids dissolve the bonds between the dead skin cells.

Reduce stress

Adrenaline and cortisol surge in the body when you’re stressed, and they cause your blood pressure to rise. This is bad news for your skin, as well as your overall mental and physical health. Unfortunately, stress levels are high across most age groups in our society.

If you’re under continuous stress, you may experience aging symptoms like:

• wrinkles
• acne
• skin rashes
• bags under the eyes
• dark circles under the eyes
• dull skin

It may be challenging to eliminate external stress in your life, but you can learn relaxation techniques to minimize its damage!

For example, deep breathing is a powerful technique that you can practice wherever you are. It reduces your stress levels, and you can combine it with other relaxation methods like aromatherapy or listening to music.

Additionally, guided imagery is a great tool to help you de-stress. It’s a variation of meditation in which you visualize a peaceful scene in your mind. The goal is to feel relaxed and give yourself a chance to let go of anxiety and tension. You can use any setting that makes you feel calm, whether it’s a quiet spot in the woods, a beach house, or the middle of Antarctica.

Get Your Vitamins

It should come as no surprise that eating healthy can have its benefits, including more youthful skin.

You can find vitamins in a wide variety of food that each has special benefits. However, eating clean isn’t the only way you can get the benefits of vitamins. There are also products, like topical creams that use the power of natural elements to help the skin. No matter where you get them, some vitamins to look out for include:

• Vitamin A (carotenoids and retinol): Found in plant foods for carotenoids, dairy products for retinol, Vitamin A helps restore your skin’s natural pigmentation. In the body, it normalizes tyrosinase activity, which is an enzyme crucial for producing melanin.
• Vitamin C: Found in citrus fruits, red and green peppers, and broccoli. Vitamin C has antioxidant properties and plays a role in synthesizing collagen, which is vital for skin health. Topical Vitamin C creams also help skin cells; some studies suggest they can even treat UV damage. However, there is still only limited research into Vitamin C’s effects on the skin on its own.
• Vitamin D: Found in egg yolk, fatty fish, and enriched milk. Vitamin D prevents skin aging and aids with skin cell repair and regrowth. You can get your vitamin D from the sun, but a topical cream prevents accelerated aging from UV rays.
• Vitamin E: Found in leafy greens, nuts, and seeds. Vitamin E has a long-term history as an anti-inflammatory agent for skin health. Applying topical vitamin E creams can reduce signs of UV-induced skin inflammation, such as swelling, edema, and erythema

Avoid bad habits

Even the best skin care routine will fall apart if you maintain certain bad habits. You may have already guessed some of them, but the habits you need to break include:

• Smoking: Not only is smoking bad for your lungs, but it’s bad for the skin. It deprives the skin of vitamins and other nutrients, causing discoloration and sagging. Ditch the cigarettes.
• Poor Sleep: Healthy skin relies on sufficient sleep. Your body and skin repair themselves when you’re asleep. If you don’t sleep enough, it accelerates the aging process.
• Tanning: Tanning beds and sun lamps aren’t good for your skin…for obvious reasons. Likewise, tanning pills may not be safe.

Treatments to Help Your Skin

The clock may only move in one direction and while there is no fountain of youth, you can still restore your skin’s vibrancy and reverse signs of aging. Check out these services to see which one may be right for you.

Cosmetic Dermal Fillers

As we age our face loses fat resulting in sagging skin and deep lines. Cosmetic dermal fillers are used to restore volume loss, fill in deep lines, and plump the lips.

Dermal fillers can:

• Enhance shallow contours
• Reconstruct contour deformities
• Soften facial wrinkles
• Plump thin lips
• Improves recessed scars
• Decrease lower lid shadows

As useful as dermal filler procedures may be, they’re not a one-size-fits-all treatment for everyone so you’ll want to consult a medical professional for a customized plan.

Botox

Botox is a commonly-known treatment that partially relaxes muscles that cause wrinkles to form around the eyes and in the forehead. After injection, the muscle can no longer contract, thus relaxing and softening wrinkles. Most often, patients seek Botox treatment for crow’s feet, frown lines, and forehead lines.

Botox injections are beneficial because they require little to no downtime. It’s considered an outpatient procedure that requires no anesthesia. The provider uses a fine needle to inject the substance into a specific muscle with little discomfort to you, the patient.

It takes a few days up to two weeks for Botox to take full effect, and it can last up to four months. As muscle function slowly returns, movement and wrinkles will return to their pre-treatment state. And like fillers, Botox is another temporary treatment choice. However, the next treatment on the list is a long-term solution!

Fractional Laser

Laser skin resurfacing boosts collagen and helps reduce fine lines and wrinkles as well as acne scars. There is a wide variety of lasers that can treat different conditions, but fractional lasers are especially useful for age-related damage.

In some cases, you can treat age-related conditions with just one treatment with the laser. However, most of the time, non-ablative lasers require you to come in for a series of treatments to tackle your skin issues thoroughly. It’s a trade-off that happens with a procedure that requires no downtime. Fortunately, results are long-lasting and effective for most skin types.

IPL Photorejuvenation

Intense pulsed light (IPL) treatments aren’t lasers, but they do treat many of the same conditions as a Fractional Laser. A dose of IPL photorejuvenation can treat rosacea, hyperpigmentation, sun damage, and acne. It can also remove or mitigate:

• freckles
• birthmarks
• age spots
• broken blood vessels

Newer IPL devices are as useful as laser treatments for fading blood vessels and other cosmetic conditions. However, keep in mind that you may still need more than one treatment to achieve your desired results.

Kybella for Double Chins

Kybella is a process of deoxycholic acid injections that attack fat cells where it is injected. They’re mostly used to target double chins in a nonsurgical manner, which means there is minimal to zero downtime for most patients.

Your body naturally produces deoxycholic acid in the stomach, but Kybella injections use a synthetic form for treatment. Once the provider injects Kybella, the acid destroys chin fat cells and prevents the region from storing new fat. It’s crucial to have a trained provider apply your injections because the acid can also damage healthy cells. The best candidate is over 18 years old and has at least a moderate amount of fat under the chin.

It takes a series of tiny injections under the chin to complete the procedure during a visit and over the next few weeks the acid goes to work. Like with laser treatment, some patients may need multiple Kybella therapies with at least six weeks between each series of injections.

Leg vein treatment

A laser treatment from a medical spa, like Couture, can make leg veins vanish! Lasers can close off and eliminate spider veins. Intense bursts of light target the vein and cause it to disappear slowly without using needles or incisions. The veins are then reabsorbed by the blood. Voila! Beautiful skin!

Want to learn more about anti-aging skin treatments? Contact us for a complimentary consultation!