Saving Face: Skin Care for Men
Middle-Aged Men Go Against the March of Time and Lines
Everything shows up on the skin. The skin is a direct reflection of what is going on internally.
— Zaida Harris, esthetician at the Willow Spas in Santa Monica, California.
With countless hours in the gym, expensive supplements, crazy diets, brand-name clothing, trendy hairstyles or choosing expensive automobiles, men spend a tremendous amount of time, money and energy trying to look and feel younger. And while you can have all that going for you, if you neglect what is perhaps the No. 1 visible sign of aging, your face, it will be impossible to hide the effects of Father Time.
Face It
What you present each day -- your face -- is literally a window for the world to peer into, and it could reveal how well you care for your skin.
“Everything shows up on the skin," said Zaida Harris, an esthetician at the Willow Spas in Santa Monica, California. "The skin is a direct reflection of what is going on internally.”
While you can't fool Mother Nature, you can misdirect people into thinking you are younger. This means taking stock of the adverse effects you can avoid, and better understanding those you can't.
“One thing is that there is the intrinsic aspect of aging, that there is nothing you can do about it, “ said Dr. David Sawcer, a professor of dermatology at the University of Southern California School of Medicine. “Observed scientifically, the elasticity, the matrix of the skin that holds it together -- collagen -- changes. And the arrival of wrinkles as skin gets thinner and also drier. But it is in the extrinsic world, the aging by virtue of the things we do, that constitutes a larger component of speeding up the aging process.“
Genetic predisposition certainly plays a role. But for most men, slowing down the aging process is partly under their control because of lifestyle choices.
It Might Stay That Way
Among the detrimental things that men can control are poor diets, smoking, alcohol, stress and even sleeping positions. All of those play on your skin, as do facial exercises.
Apparently those goofy contortions are not the pushups for the face they are purported to be. So, your mother was partly right: Make a weird face often enough, and it might stay that way. Sort of.
“Repeated facial expressions such as facial exercises also speed up aging,” said Sawcer. “People think those are good for you when, in fact, they are likely to create more wrinkles."
As for lifestyle choices, alcohol is known to dry out your skin, and Sawcer says, “When you drink, everyone looks younger. Once you’ve sobered up and rehydrated, everyone goes back to looking older."
Smoking is another culprit -- no big surprise there -- as it prevents oxygen from easily getting to your skin, making your face look dull and lifeless.
And that advice from your acne-ridden teenage years -- to not eat certain foods because they might affect your skin? That still holds. Speeding up the aging process is caused by the breaking down of DNA and some of that can be attributed to a diet with lots of greasy and highly processed foods.
“We can measure that, for example, in urine samples at the California Health and Longetivity Institute," said Dr. Ronald Moy, a Beverly Hills-based surgeon and president of the American Academy of Dermatology. "A diet involving lots of fruits and vegetables actually slows down the aging process, decreases chances of getting cancer and helps the skin look its best.”
Stress also shows on a man's face.
“Stress plays a major role with the face,” Harris said. “Deep frown lines over time, clenching their jaws or grinding their teeth time and again without realizing it -- a huge benefit of getting a facial is the incredible amount of tension relief you get. Scalp and neck massage, forehead and eyebrow massage are very effective. Stimulating the areas of the face from the scalp down to the shoulders can be very productive in reducing stress and improving circulation.”
Wear a Hat
Everything, though, pales before your skin's No. 1 enemy: the sun.
“The absolute leading thing that speeds up the aging of the skin more than any other things combined is exposure to sun," Sawcer said. “If you took identical twins, sending one to live in the North Pole and one to live at the equator, all things being equal, at a given point the one living more in the sun will have more of the features associated with aged skin than the one dwelling in the colder climes.”
Since relocating may not be option, we have to try to mitigate the effects of the sun with several smaller moves. This includes wearing quality sunglasses, limiting exposure to the sun at its peak hours, nightly application of a moisturizer, and, most of all, regular use of good sunscreen.
“Men should make it a habit to use quality sunscreen. Some of the older brands haven’t really kept up technologically and so you want to make sure you apply broad spectrum sunscreen, blocking UVA and UVB light,” Moy said. “There are not a lot of good ones out there that are approved by the FDA. I recommend Aveda and Neutrogena as effective examples, easily available and not really expensive. “
The quest for youth is not a new notion, but if you want to save face, start with a sunscreen, moisturizer and rethink some of your habits. This trend for guys seems to be catching on as skin care professionals and product manufacturers have acknowledged a large upswing in their business is coming primarily from the male market.
Men are taking better care of their skin for a variety of reasons, but anti-aging regarding the face has become more about health and less about narcissism.
- Photo Credit Getty Images Jupiterimages/Creatas/Getty Images Thinkstock/Comstock/Getty Images Stephen Schauer/Digital Vision/Getty Images
