How to keep your skin looking great
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
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Everyone wants to have younger looking skin. Unfortunately, even the most effective face creams can't turn back the years, despite 'reducing the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles'. But there are steps we can all take so our skin looks healthy for longer.
Understanding your skin
Before you can look after your skin properly, you need to understand it. Our body's largest organ is made up of three layers.
- The outer epidermis contains pigment cells, the stratum corneum surface layer made up of flat, dead skin cells, and the basal layer where new cells are generated and travel upwards.
- The middle dermis layer contains blood vessels, nerves, oil glands, collagen fibres and elastin.
- The inner subcutaneous layer contains blood vessels, hair follicles and fat cells.
There are a number of things that determine how quickly our skin ages, including genetic factors such as your natural skin type, environmental factors such as exposure to sunlight and external factors such as whether or not you smoke.
In general, pale skins wrinkle faster than darker skins that are protected by increased amounts of pigment and lipids.
Age is another vital factor: your skin is very different at 20 to how it is at 70. Because of this, we've put together an action plan for how to look after your skin decade-by-decade.
