What Else For Wrinkles?
Of course, Benjamin Franklin did a lot for our country, but he really did the skincare world a favor by coining the phrase, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
One of the most universal skin questions people ask is what else they can do to prevent wrinkles. Talk about a loaded question (with many complicated feelings to address because wrinkles are normal, and we should have them!), but here is an intro to important tips for healthy skin aging. Some are free, and some are spendy, but all will help make your skin last extra long!
Wrinkles come thanks to smiling, frowning, time, gravity, sun, smoking, drinking from straws, drinking alcohol, eating sugar, sleeping posture, stress, and the list continues. Totally preventing wrinkles is totally preventing life! We don't want that, but we do want to infuse back into your skin what life takes out of it!
Add more serums – especially retinol, alpha hydroxy acids, hyaluronic acid, antioxidants, growth factors, and peptides.
There is no magical "anti-wrinkle" product or ingredient. If you see terms like this on your product packaging, please understand it's just a marketing term. The best products for treating and preventing wrinkles are professional serums tailored to your skin's needs. Effective serums use technology to absorb it deep into the skin so it can do its thing.
When a good aesthetician crafts a professional regimen, they typically start a client on one or two serums – to begin with more can be overwhelming. However, to do all you can, you need a collection of serums that address different components of your skin's needs and complement each other. If you wonder why your aesthetician has such nice skin and ask about their regimen, you might not have time for their whole answer! They are almost always layering no fewer than two and probably often up to five serums on top of each other.
If "avoiding wrinkles" is important to you, add a serum you can afford into your lineup every couple of months and learn how to layer them with your other serums.
Work in professional treatments and at-home tools that your aesthetician approves.
Professional facial treatments can be as frequent as you'd like or annually and still be effective. These appointments not only provide preventative care and treatment to reverse skin damage, but they're also an important check-in with your aesthetician to ensure everything is going according to plan and your skin responds to your homecare. We like to mix skin-treating modalities in each session, or from session to session, to give your skin a variety of effective tools to get it its healthiest and build that collagen.
In addition to following the proper homecare product regimen, there are a few worthwhile devices to use at home to support the skin work happening in the treatment room. Microcurrent tools and LED devices like masks and wands take time to use but are highly effective in creating visible changes in skin both topically and deeper down through collagen synthesis. These are also semi-quick pick-me-ups when you're feeling or seeing the effects of life (or some fun weekend life choices!) on your face.
Trade up your drugstore cleanser for something better.
To use spendy serums and insist on over-the-counter cleanser and moisturizer is a waste, any way you slice it. We aren't being pretentious; we just recognize that drugstore products are there to do their job at a basic level for those who truly just want the basics.
Often, cheaper products almost always mean cheaper and diluted formulations. A professional cleanser can cost around $20-$50. That's a slight difference, especially if you spend money on serums, and then also allows you to guilt-freely sometimes skip your serums. When you use a cleanser with skin-loving and skin-treating ingredients, you infuse your skin with what it needs to set you up for success. It also gets your skin cleaner, removing traces of hard-to-remove pollution and makeup products that cause aging.
Extra Credit Ideas:
Stop moving your forehead.
We aren't asking you to change who you are, but if you are someone making a constant brow furrow or WTF face – anything you can do to reduce the frequency or soften that would be helpful. Isn't it funny, when your grandparents warned you, "If you make that face, it will stay like that," they weren't wrong?!
Get lots of water, sleep, and humidity.
Blah, blah, blah. But these are two easy things to do (drink more water and use a humidifier) and one essential thing (sleep) that greatly affects how you age. While you should never choose between internal wellness and skincare (both, please), skincare works much better when taking care of yourself. Ever wonder why your skin looks better in the tropics? Hello, humidity to firm, hydrate, and plump!
Medispa treatments and Botox.
Be sure to look at advanced skin procedures before you are unhappy with your skin, channel your inner Benjamin Franklin, and think about prevention! If you can afford it, start with microneedling, deeper chemical peels, and broadband light therapy treatments 2-4 times a year. These are better gifts for your skin health and are a great precursor to Botox.
However, when you can't stop thinking about a specific line or wrinkle, then don't be scared of Botox. There's a very low risk and a pretty high reward with Botox. Our only big piece of advice: injections are an art, so don't just look for a medical professional; look for a medical professional AND a skin artist. Don't look for the deals; Botox will cost you, so choose the right and recommended professional.
And our only other big piece of advice regarding Botox: it only treats the muscle it is injected into to stop that muscle from firing and crinkling the skin where your wrinkle is present. It does not work on skin or skin health at all; you need Botox AND skin treatments. We field a lot of questions around botox daily and hear a lot of confusion out there. We are happy to help you understand it so your expectations are properly managed before you "go under the needle."