Signs of Facial Aging and Ways You Can Reverse Them

With age comes wisdom. Unfortunately, it can also come with skin problems for most of us. Aging can have many negative effects on the skin, notably causing dull or discolored skin, age spots, lines, wrinkles, and droopy or saggy skin. Fear not, because with the information listed below, you will be fighting Father Time and his villainy known as “aging” in — well — no time.

Effects of Aging on the Skin:

Dull or Discolored Skin & Age Spots

Over time our skin naturally changes, becoming dry and coarse and having a discolored or dull look. The main reason behind dry skin (also referred to as “crepey skin” or “elephant skin”) is because as we age, the body starts to produce less and less collagen, a protein which aids in skin elasticity and reduce appearance of sagging cheeks.

Age spots are another problem that occurs as we age. This happens when pigment cells become overactive, which can be caused by too much exposure to the Sun’s rays and not applying enough sunscreen.

• Dry and coarse skin
• Age spots

Lines & Wrinkles

When it comes to lines and wrinkles around the face, the most common cause is the loss of elasticity in the skin and a lack of collagen production, as we age. These lines can come in the form of crow’s feet near the eyes, smile and frown line, forehead lines, and furrowed brows.

Humans are very expressive, and as a result we tend to make a lot of facial movements like frowning, raising our eyebrows, or squinting, in our day to day life. Over time, paired with less production of collagen, our constant use of facial muscles causes lines and wrinkles to appear. But that is not the only cause of these dreaded features — it can also be attributed to UV light exposure from the sun, smoking, and even dehydration.

• Crow’s feet
• Smile/frown lines
• Forehead lines
• Furrowed brows

Saggy or Drooping Skin

As mentioned before, collagen plays a huge role in causing these problems as we age. As we get older and the skin loses elasticity, our eyebrows and eyelids tend to droop or sag. Not only is this aesthetically unpleasing, but it can impact your vision in a negative way and even cause loss of vision. The loss of elasticity even affects the cheeks, and chin and jawline areas, causing “jowls” to form — the saggy skin that develops from your chin or jawline.

Like the other effects, this problem can also be caused by, facial expressions, exposure to the sun’s UV rays, and smoking.

• Droopy eyelids
• Loose skin along jawline and chin
• Sunken cheeks and eyes

Ways to Combat Aging Include:

Healthy Diet

To maintain facial aesthetics, it is essential to maintain a healthy diet. The experts at SiO Beauty provided their own tips on what they recommend eating and drinking.

They recommend:

1. Eating a lot of fruits and vegetables.
2. Drink around 2 liters every day.
3. Eat foods rich in Omega-3 (such as salmon, avocado, and almonds).
4. Take multivitamins daily.    
5. Drink less alcohol & smoke less (although they recommend full quitting).

Facelift

Facelifts have long been seen as the flagship of plastic surgery. People who undergo the procedure can enjoy their impressive results for up to 10 to 15 years. Not only can a facelift reverse the effects of aging, but it can also give a long-needed boost in confidence that a lot of people might need.

An extension of the facelift, the deep plane facelift is a procedure that one top facial plastic surgeon in South Carolina, Dr. Joseph Russell, utilizes to give his patients the best option for achieving their desired aesthetic goals and restoring facial harmony. In a one-on-one chat, he answered a few questions about the effects of aging on the face, which can be found at the end.

Filler Injections

Filler injections, such as Botox or Dysport, are great alternatives when wanting to restore facial volume and reducing the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. In terms of smoothing wrinkles and lines on the face, treatments such as Botox have been a popular choice by many specialists in the cosmetic industry for decades since it boasts a track record of impressive results. Botox works by blocking nerve signals to the muscles, causing wrinkles and lines to relax and smoothen out.

However, a competitor of Botox, known as Dysport, works wonders as well. Overall, for addressing the most common issues, both Botox and Dysport function very similarly once applied. However, while Botox injects toxins (safe ones, of course), Dysport utilizes a small sample of proteins, which are then injected underneath the skin where the muscles lie.

Laser Resurfacing

Laser resurfacing treatments are available for people who want to correct skin discolorations, like pigmentation spots or acne, and even wrinkles and lines. Lasers come in the form of ablative and non-ablative.

Ablative laser treatment is the more common of the two, being utilized to correct larger imperfections, such as scars or wrinkles. Some commonly used ablative lasers are the CO2 laser and the Erbium laser. While recovery time is short (2 to 4 weeks), the treated area can remain red for up to a few months. Non-Ablative is better at correcting discoloration in the skin, such as age spots, and boasts an even quicker recovery time of 1 to 2 weeks.

Questions for a Specialist

Dr. Joseph Russell is a Fellowship trained and board-certified Facial Plastic Surgeon in South Carolina, who mastered the craft of deep plane facelifts, through intensive medical education and fellowship training.

Question: Are there other forms of treatment that can be utilized for combating aging?

Answer:  The most important ongoing preventative for aging of the skin is daily sunscreen use.  This gets overlook a lot, the UV-rays from the sun hasten collagen breakdown, which causes fine lines and then wrinkles to appears.  Once aging has occurred, I typically start with botox and facial fillers to rejuvenate the face, and once those no longer produce satisfactory results for the patient, we then move to surgical treatments—usually a combination of a deep plane face and neck lift, brow lift, eyelid lift, and/or CO2 laser resurfacing.

Question: Are collagen supplements really worth it?

Answer:  “They don’t hurt, but I’ve never seen a facial transformation occur from someone only taking collagen supplements.”

Question: What treatment do you think pays off, the most, in the long run?

Answer:  “A deep plane and face and neck lift.  It produces a striking transformation, turning the clock back 15 years or more, and can last 15 years and beyond.”