Do you want to maintain a youthful-looking skin and beat the effects of aging? Well, this is a desire in every one of us and if it were possible to reverse the hand of time, we would do that indeed. However, it is important to understand that a lot of things normally take place behind the scene and some of them can be slowed down or prevented altogether if we knew how to do it. First, there are many factors that contribute to the aging of your skin and collagen is one of the things we should understand as we seek to stay healthy and youthful looking.
What is collagen?
Collagen is a protein produced by the body naturally and comprises over 80 percent of our skin. Generally, our skin is made of three major components namely collagen, elastin and glycosaminoglycans. These three components are essential for the skin as they provide necessary strength and elasticity.
Do you know that you lose collagen as you age?
Despite the fact that collagen is an essential component, our bodies’ ability to produce it normally decline as we advance in age. It is good to note that collagen isn’t only important for the skin but also plays an important role in strengthening our blood vessels thus helping them operate normally and effectively. With the decline in collagen levels, the skin becomes drier and thinner, develops wrinkles and sagging thus causing it to appear old and unattractive. The loss of collagen leaves the skin looking dull since it isn’t able to shed dead skin cells quickly. However, this does not mean that all is lost since there is something you can do to help your skin to produce more collagen even as you advance in age.
How to stop or slow down the loss of collagen
There is no denying that as you age, your body will slow down on the production of this essential protein. However, there are other factors that normally contribute to the destruction of this substance and knowing how to handle them will go a long way in helping you stay youthful-looking and healthy. First, you can slow collagen deterioration by living a healthy lifestyle. One way to do this is to stop smoking since smoking exposes your skin to high radicals which eventually contributes to the destruction of collagen. In addition, you could also prevent the destruction by avoiding over-exposure to pollutants and the sun.
Additionally, the presence of antioxidants is also essential as it facilitates in the production of collagen. Antioxidants can be obtained through diet and other forms of treatments. There are also suitable products that can be applied on the skin to help keep it moist and healthy as they help replenish collagen in the skin. In some extreme cases, collagen injections have been used to target different parts of the body including forehead wrinkles, sagging lips, scars and crow’s feet. These treatments can be used alongside other procedures such as laser skin tightening which involves the heating of collagen thus causing it to contract while at the same time tightening the skin. This process normally involves passing of infrared energy (LuxIR Deep, Titan), radiofrequency energy (Thermage) or both (Refirme) into the skin so as to heat and remodel collagen.
Collagen creams are available in stores to improve your skin health.
References
http://www.prevention.com/beauty/natural-beauty/how-sugar-ages-your-skin
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