Have wondered At What Age Do Wrinkles Start? When will you have to start worrying about them? Or do you already have wrinkles showing on your face?
At What Age Do Wrinkles Start? For some of us, so long ago I don’t remember exactly!
If you are doing the tanning still, it won’t be very long before the wrinkles will make their way on your face.
For most of us, lifestyle has the most lasting effect on our skin, both when we are young and as we age.
Prevention is the most effective way of delaying the appearance of wrinkles, and there is something you can do. So if you are 16 or 61, you should do a quick lifestyle check to see where you are in your “wrinkle life.”
Some people age well, others less so. Some people seem never to wrinkle.
Good behavior like staying out of the sun, not smoking as well as an effective skin-care routine. Your cleansing and moisturizing, applying sunscreen every day, and sometimes more than just mornings.
And yes, your doctor’s procedures can have something to do with how fast you wrinkle. Doctors don’t come cheap. Prevention is a better move, for your skin as well as your pocketbook!
Genetics also plays a part in your skin aging and wrinkling process. This is something you can do nothing about. However, using your parent’s aging patterns is good a prediction of what will happen for you.
Science and Genetics
Plain science and genetics are what control your wrinkling. This is natural control for how your skin ages. You can change this and rush your aging with lifestyle choices. Slow it down as well, with lifestyle choices and sun-smart living.
Some people age at a different rate than others. One reason, according to plastic surgeon Dr. Dara Liotta, “Your genes, as well as your ethnic makeup, affect the way you age.”
“Then there is also your skin tone, the fat content of your skin, and DNA can keep you naturally baby-faced for longer.”
Assistant professor in dermatology at the University of Pittsburgh and director of the Cosmetic Surgery and Skin Health Center, Suzan Obagi explains:
“Normal healthy skin has a nice epidermis with a smooth cornified, or outer layer that acts as a good barrier to water and environmental injury. Skin color and tone is even and unblemished.”
Collagen provides skin firmness. Elastin gives skin elasticity and rebound. Glycosaminoglycans or GAGs keep your skin hydrated.
You have lots of these properties in your skin when you are young and your skin is healthy.
Under a microscope, a biopsy of a wrinkle shows nothing to warn you that it is a wrinkle! So what causes the skin to look wrinkled? It is simply a natural process of your skin aging from outside events, and from getting older on the inside.
Early Wrinkles Are Not The Norm
The good news is: Aging is a natural process that takes place over the years regardless of outside influences.
After the age of 20, your body produces about 1 percent less collagen in your skin each year.
Because of this, your skin becomes thinner and more fragile with age. You will also have diminished functioning of your sweat and oil glands. There will also be less elastin production. As well as less GAG formation.
Natural wrinkle formation as a result of aging is inevitable, but it will always be slight.
Natural aging occurs in addition to aging from the sun and environmental damage.
The results add up quickly. Habits like tobacco use and exposure to pollution, poor skincare routine, are all examples of “outside” aging.
Environmental aging will show up as thickening of the cornified layer. There can be precancerous changes such as lesions or actinic keratosis. As well as skin cancer including basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, lentigo malignant melanoma.
There will also be freckle and sunspot formation. You will also see an exaggerated loss of collagen, elastin, and GAGs.
These processes make your skin look rough, have an uneven tone, brown patches, be thinner, and have deep wrinkles.
This link will explain further how this works, check it out to see your direction in the future.
How To Prevent Early Wrinkles
Prevention is your key to minimizing your wrinkles at any age.
Protect your skin before all these changes start to take place.
Using today’s sun blocking clothing and sunscreen together makes the battle easier. The sun feels so good, we soon get beyond the sun-safe time period when we are out. Using sun blocking clothing allows you to relax and stay safe.
Here is what the new findings are telling us. We must protect from both UVA and UVB rays. And we must protect all 365 days a year.
Use at least an SPF of at least 35. The chemical form of sunscreen is better than not using anything. Any shirt is better than no shirt if you don’t have a UPF some with you!
The zinc- or titanium-based products are referred to as sunblock. They protect you skin because the form a film on your skin, physically blocking the sun from your skin.
Safe Fun In The Sun
Sunscreen has different levels of protection. Sunscreens protect by chemicals getting down in your skin, and causing your skin to react. You need to apply and give chemical sunscreen a few minutes to start working.
Use a physical sun block, or if using a screen use at least a wide spectrum 30 SPF. Anything less will leave you vernable to the sun. I buy the products with at least an SPF of 50. This gives me a bit over an hour before I start burning.
At this point in my life, I do not risk sunburn. I have been careless too many times already. I don’t know when my time for a skin cancer will come back.
Be safe in the sun by going out early before 10 AM or later after 4 PM. Spending more time in the shade, and wearing UPF clothing are part of my game plan to avoid skin cancer. I already have wrinkles, and don’t want any more.
Making the choice to wear sun blocking clothing can keep me from getting too many more wrinkles to quickly. My sun hat with the wide brim. Also, my sunglasses and a loose-fitting long sleeve shirt will help protect the most of my body. Then adding some sunscreen on my face, hands, and other exposed areas.
Adding long pants or a long skirt will also give my skin more protection from the sun.
These are things I can do. You can too.
Aging There Is More Than Wrinkles!
Aging! Wrinkles! Those words seem to go together in our mental images. And they are often interchanged for each other in writing.
You notice the wrinkles, then there are wrinkles and sagging skin! According to dermatologists, most people experience a combination of wrinkles, hyperpigmentation. As well as suffer a loss of elasticity and loss of volume as they age!
How much fun is that? What can a mere human do?
The texture and color of your skin will determine how your skin will look and change during the aging process. As time passes, elastin and collagen become looser. The fat cells in your skin will also start to shrink.
“Thick” skin is a literal compliment.
When you have thicker skin, the signs of aging are less noticeable. When the dermis is thicker, the cells are more densely packed together and more compact.
The fine lines and wrinkles are generally not as noticeable with thicker skin.
Your DNA determines whether you were born with thick skin.
Genetically, those who have melanin-rich skin (such as Hispanic, Mediterranean, Asian-American, and African-American ) are pre-disposed to have thicker skin.
These people usually have skin that keeps wrinkles softer.
Wonder why wrinkles are more noticeable on your forehead or under the eyes? That’s where your skin is thinnest. You really need your sunhat.
DNA Determines Plump And Moist Skin
Plump skin actually is a good thing. Makes you look younger. Genetics determine whether you have higher fat content in deeper areas of your skin.
We really don’t get excited about higher fat in other parts of our body. And, no moving fat around is not a good solution for most. Deep fat for your face means that you can keep that plump, hydrated look longer.
As a rule, African-American and Asian people tend to have higher fat content in their skin, due to DNA. So with a tendency for thicker skin, as well as a higher fat content in their skin. With just a little prevention, these fortunate people should look younger much longer. Fewer wrinkles at all ages.
Sunburn And Skin Tones
Your skin tone and sunburn-likelihood affects how you age.
Melanin, the pigment that gives your skin and hair its color, also affects your aging.
The higher your skin tones numbers fall on the Fitzpatrick scale, the darker your skin tones. This method works by rating skin tones according to numbers 1 (for very fair and prone to sunburns) to 6. (for very dark skin that rarely burns).
The Fitpatrick system helps you understand who has more melanin in your skin.
The more melanin, the more protection you have from the sun. This does not mean that very dark skinned people don’t need to wear sunscreen. This means that darker skin has a few minutes longer before the dangerous rays will injure or sunburn. You must be careful. You are not excused.
UV radiation is the number-one aging factor that’s not controlled by your DNA. The sun causes molecular damage to your DNA. Your skin is made up of collagen and elastin. The sun and its UV rays break down collagen and elastin. This leads to sagging, and other signs of aging.
While melanin-rich skin (darker tones in the skin) has the benefit of additional built-in protection from UV radiation. This does not excuse from ignoring the sun safe protocalls. You just get a few more safe minutes, not hours!
Even darker tone skin can and will sunburn. You are not exempt!
Darker tone skin tends to show aging in a form other than wrinkles. Melanin rich tones translate to hyperpigmentation and sun spots. This aging reactions to being in the sun is why this is a primary aging concern for those on the darker end on the Fitzpatrick scale.
When your skin melanin-rich as in Hispanic, Asian, and black skin, you notice hyperpigmentation and sun spots more than in Caucasian skin. Asian skin may speckle.
Most “whitening” and brightening skin-care products offered in Asian countries is to lighten hyperpigmentation and dark-spot-correction beauty concerns.
What Can You Do When You Have Farer Skin?
This doesn’t mean that simply because you don’t come from a melanin-rich background, you’re doomed to age more rapidly.
Your nutrition, skincare, exercise, your diet, overall health all play a huge part. These are all part of what help ka healthy lifestyle that keeps your skin and body from showing signs of molecular damage.
It is all but impossible to accurently estimate a percentagefor how much genetics affect aging. We do tend to age like our mothers.
Aging is a combination of nature (genetics) and nurture (how we treat our bodies and faces). You may have been born one way, but when it comes to aging, nature doesn’t trump nurture.
My Mom was exposed to the sun more as a younger person, than as an adult. However, as the grew older, Mom and Dad loved to take drives around the farming area where they had lived and worked.
When Mom’s skin cancer was found, it was on her upper chest, right where the vee neck exposed her skin to riding in the car. The Doctor stated that due to the sun hitting an area that naturally looses its protection and gets thinner faster is what lead to her skin cancer.
Due to the location of the skin cancer, her surgery was easy for her to take care of. However, had she known about sunscreen, and gotten into the habit of using it daily, she could have avoided the 6 months of care required to get it taken care of.
This tells me that even as I age I do have to be careful. I have had actual skin cancers, so my exposure limits are maxed out. I am grateful for the sun blocking clothing we have and the knowledge of how to use it with sunscreen to protect our selves from skin cancer.
Have you explored the world of UPF clothing. Do you know how it can block your skin from the sun?
Now Is TheTime To Wear Sunscreen Daily
How old were you when you started wearing sunscreen?
Did you start actually applying sunscreen daily (at least SPF 30?) as recommended by dermatologists (to prevent skin cancer, wrinkles, premature skin aging)?
To be able to enjoy the positive effects – fewer wrinkles than other people your age who did not diligently applied SPF daily. Are you having less skin cancer than other family members? What about your friend who are also in the sun with you?
The sun is responsible for 90 percent of the visible aging that takes place on a person’s face (so fewer wrinkles/no skin damage would make sense if one applied SPF daily.
And we know that the sun is responsible for skin cancer.
Sami’s Take On At What Age Do Wrinkles Start
There is too much evidence that the sun can damage our skin. Speeding up the wrinkling? That just adds insult to injury.
I wish I had known how much I was damaging my skin with too much sun. The sun fun times I would not trade and I am not sorry our family had those times in the lake, playing in the snow. Playing sports, even the kids when very young playing in the sand piles.
I do most definitely regret letting them grow up with so little protection from the sun.
Realizing that the damage we were seeing on our friends faces, on their arms. The evidence was there. We just did not connect what we were seeing with what was happening.
Now we know. We can make some move to protect ourselves from too much sun. Hopefully I will be able to avoid more skin cancers.
As my family is now taking better care of their skin. Using more UPF clothing and being alert to the danges of the sun at High Noon, we are on the way to younger skin for all of us.
It is just a matter of better lifestyle choices.
How will you and your family age?