In a culture that places value on youth, aging can be a painful process. Overcoming those cultural biases is one key to aging gracefully. Accept what you cannot change and embrace your experience and natural beauty. However, there are plenty of things you can do to maintain youthful beauty while your peers are being offered the senior discount. After all, while looking older if you don’t have to? Here are four things you can do to maintain your beauty.
Take a Collagen Supplement
Collagen makes up about a third of the protein in your body, helping make up your skin, bones and the cushion between your joints, to name just a few of its myriad roles. It’s the structural framework that keeps everything in place and working. So, it’s unfortunate that your collagen production slows beginning in your 30s. Women will lose about 30% of the collagen in their skin in the first few years of menopause. This loss leads to saggy skin and wrinkles but also joint pain and loss of muscle tone.
Taking a supplement like Dermal Repair Complex can provide more collagen to your skin and has additional skincare ingredients. Science has shown that collagen is too large a molecule to absorb through your skin, but you can take a supplement that will increase your collagen production.
You could also choose to take a more generalized form of collagen, like hydrolyzed collagen or gelatin that can provide collagen to the skin but also help your joint and bone health. Looking young is more than your face, it’s how you carry yourself and how you feel. Collagen supplements can address all those issues.
Drink Plenty of Water
Collagen gives your skin the structure but water fills that structure. A good water intake will keep your nails from becoming brittle, plump out your skin and prevent breakouts by flushing toxins through your system and keeping your skin balanced. If you find your skin still overly oily in middle age, it could be genetic, but it could be your skin’s reaction to dehydration, trying to prevent you from drying out and blowing away.
Your body is water-based, about 70% water, so when you don’t drink enough water, all your systems run more poorly. Often people who think they are hungry are actually just thirsty. Drinking water can keep you from ingesting extra calories. It also keeps your digestive system working smoothly.
Wear Sun Protection
Ultraviolet light in the form of UVA and UVB rays from the sun and artificial sunlight like tanning beds are the number one cause of premature aging. Fight wrinkles, sunspots and even skin cancer by taking sun protection seriously, every day. Sun cancer is the worst outcome but sun exposure has plenty of guaranteed negative results from inflammation and the breakdown of collagen to the inability of the skin to fight off infection.
Use SPF daily, even if the only sun you see is through the office window, to prevent sun damage. When you’re outside, compound your regular sunscreen ritual with a hat, sunglasses and long sleeves. Remember that sunscreen has to be reapplied regularly. There are now many setting sprays with SPF so if you wear makeup and don’t want to put sunscreen on top, you can spray a light layer to refresh your protection.
Engage in Strength Training
Finally, you need more than a daily walk as you get older. Strength training has amazing anti-aging benefits. Prevent osteoporosis and muscle loss with as few as two strength training workouts per week. You don’t even have to join a gym. Traditional calisthenics like pushups, crunches and burpees use your own body weight and don’t require any special equipment. No matter how good your skin looks, if you have trouble moving around and are hunched and shrunken from a sedentary lifestyle, you’ll give away your age or look even older.
Follow these four tips and you’ll have them all wondering if there’s an aging portrait in the closet. You’ll maintain natural beauty on the inside that shows on the outside.
