These 10 Daily Activities Can Add Years to Your Face

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Ageing happens to each of us, but certain lifestyle factors can easily add as much as 10 years to your looks. If you don’t like what you see in the mirror, it’s time to evaluate some of your daily routines.

Did you know that you can significantly slow down the ageing process in your face, by making small changes in your daily routine? The foods you eat, your sleeping habits and even your daily can add years to your face and may even shorten your lifespan.

These 10 Daily Activities Can Add Years to Your Face
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Below are the 10 Ways to Add Years to Your Face:

1. Consuming Too Much Sugar

When you eat sugars, they are converted into glucose in your body and enter the bloodstream, where it then search out and attach to skin proteins. Once attached, it forms new molecules known as advanced-glycation end products or AGEs.

But what does that have to do with your face? The more sugar you consumed, the more AGEs you create. These AGEs mess with your body’s elastin and collagen, which help maintain your skin’s elasticity and firmness. In summary, too much sugar leads to wrinkled and sagging skin.

You can reduce the amount of advanced-glycation end products or AGEs your body produces by avoiding sugary products and processed foods. Familiarize yourself with these various sugar names such as, corn syrup, fructose, glucose, sucrose and dextrose. Saccharose, xylose, treacle, maltodextrin and dextrin are some of its trickier disguises.

2. Cutting Out All Fat from Your Diet

Some fat is needed in maintaining a youthful appearance and feeling, according to a certified nutritionist and exercise physiologist. Heart-healthy omega 3 fatty acids present in oily fish, such as such as mackerel, salmon, walnuts and flax seeds can keep skin supple and plump, therefore preventing wrinkles. It also help boost both heart and brain health. It is recommended by The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics to include fish in your meals at least twice a week.

3. Excessive Drinking

Excess drinking can make your blood vessels lose tone, leaving your face with permanent thread veins. Also, it dehydrates your skin, which leads to the deepening of wrinkles, sallowness and dryness. Crows feet are also another danger because drinkers are often deficient in vitamin A which is essential for making collagen, as per NetDoctor.

Avoid sugary cocktails as much as possible for a more youthful complexion. If you are going to drink, there are ways of limiting the damage. Beer contains important B vitamins such as folic acid, niacin and antioxidants. While red wine contains the anti-ageing compound resveratrol.

4. Exposure to Pollution

Pollution can also have adverse effects on your skin. When air pollution comes into contact with your skin, the tiny particles present may infiltrate deep layers of the epidermis, which can lead to loss of firmness and elasticity.

Pollution breaks down collagen and creates damaging free radicals in your skin. The damage appears as hyper-pigmentation and fine lines.

It is therefore important to use a good moisturizer that creates a barrier between your skin and air pollution. Also, wash your face thoroughly at the end of each day to remove harmful pollutants.

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5. Not Getting Enough Sleep

An eight hours sleep a night is the antidote to everyday stresses of life and keeps your skin looking younger. Lack or adequate of sleep causes short-term complexion problems, which includes dark circles around the eyes and lacklustre skin.

During the day the skin cells are fighting on-going damage caused by pollution and sunlight. Sleep is important because stress hormones drop to normal levels at night, thus giving cells time to rejuvenate and repair.

6. Not Using Sunblock

The sun is the primary cause of skin ageing, most particularly in the summer. But it can also reach you on rainy, cloudy or snowy days.

Skin-damaging UV rays can also penetrate through glass, so it may be appropriate to apply sun protection even indoors.

7. Poor Diet

Your diet can either help keep your skin glowing and youthful or make you look older. Consuming too much simple carbohydrates and sugar can wreck havoc into your skin’s elastin molecules and collagen.

Also, simple carbohydrates and refined sugar create inflammation in the body and increase insulin levels, which accelerates wrinkling.

8. Putting Too Much Makeup

Wearing excessive amounts of makeup, most especially oil based products, can clog your skin pores and cause outbreaks, that is according to Health.com. Also, overusing skin products with irritating chemicals, fragrances and alcohol agents may dry out the skin through the removal of its natural oils, which causes wrinkles and premature lines.

Always consult with your dermatologist for guidance and avoid wearing too much make-up.

9. Smoking

Smoking can add years to your appearance. It is linked with premature facial wrinkling because it results to a decrease in collagen synthesis and also depletes vitamin C, which is crucial in the manufacture of collagen.

There are more than 4,000 chemicals in cigarettes, many of which lead to the destruction of elastin and collagen. Smoking oand even being around second hand smoke degrades the building blocks of your skin, which causes wrinkles, fine lines and sagging skin.

10. Stress

Situations that cause prolonged anxiety can also affect your facial appearance. It’s not just wrinkles or dark circle, stress can also lead to brittle nails, acne, hives and even hair loss. Those under a lot of stress neglect their skin, which can aggravate the situation.

Also, chronic extreme stress can actually cause you to become physically older. In a study comprising of 58 women between the ages of 20 to 50, it was found that the immune cells of those who lived with extreme stress, tended to show signs of approximately 10 years’ worth of added aging, as compared to those women who led less stressful lives.

While stress stress in unavoidable, you can fins ways to help deal with that stress. That is through yoga, meditating, kick-boxing or something that helps you unwind and de-stress.

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