There’s a huge demand for anti-aging products for the skin. Yet with recent developments in skin care and the veracity of the claims being made, it can be hard to navigate the anti-aging industry and the products available.
Anti-aging products for the skin vary in quality, but they work, and they’re getting better by the year. That said, it’s important to know what to look for when choosing among the many anti-aging products for the skin that clamour for your hard-earned dollar. And in this article, we’ll review just that.
Anti-Aging Creams
Today’s skin creams and moisturizers use multiple compounds and variations of botanicals to protect skin at the cellular level. Want the best? Try prescription retinoids – they’re a variation of vitamin A and remain the benchmark for anti-aging skin products. The downside is that, as the name implies, they usually require a prescription.
As an alternative, try an over-the-counter skin cream like Kollagen Intensiv, which mixes lower concentrations of retinol with botanicals and, among other ingredients, hyaluronic acid, making it one of the more potent cosmeceuticals, as they’re sometimes called. The proteins they use can relax the facial muscles and plump the skin for up to twelve hours.
Soaps and Cleansers That Moisturize
Bar soaps often contain sodium lauryl sulfate, which strips natural oils from the skin. Some organic soaps side-step this process with natural ingredients, but for the most part, traditional soap leads to dry skin and the skin aging that follows.
More recently, moisturizing soaps and liquid non-soap cleansers have emerged as dual-purpose cleansers that rid the skin of bacteria and lock moisture into the skin’s outer layers. These products use emollients and humectants like hyaluronic acid, which helps the skin retain water. Other cleansers are formulated to treat eczema, or oily and acne-prone skin.
Get Rid of Wrinkles
Wrinkles form when there’s less collagen production to give skin its plumpness. Researchers have found that skin cells called fibroblasts produce collagen, but they’re less active as we get older.
Fortunately, fibroblasts can be stimulated to produce collagen at similar levels to their original rates with peptides combined with a water-soluble form of vitamin B3. What’s more, some anti-aging skin creams use hexamidine – a disinfectant often used to line disposable diapers – to lock in moisture and improve the lipid structure of aging skin.
Protection From the Sun
For all the most recent developments in skin care and anti-aging, your best protection against skin aging remains to stay out of the sun. Estimates suggest that almost 70% of visible aging can be prevented with less exposure to both the UVA and UVB rays that constitute ultraviolet radiation from the sun.
While old sunscreens protected well against UVB rays, few fared against the deeper-penetrating UVA radiation, and the UVA blockers that worked were inconvenient and quickly wore off.
Under new FDA regulations, all sunscreens with the Broad Spectrum label must protect against UVA and UVB radiation, and for longer periods. Sunscreen technology is improving by the year, and many products now reduce sun damage like patchy skin, wrinkling and age spots.
In addition, some moisturizers and even make-up now have built-in UVA blockers, which make sun protection more convenient than ever.
But remember that while anti-aging products continue to improve, there is no process to reverse damage from the sun. Your best strategy to look young may be to limit sun exposure, to use proven anti-aging products like Kollagen Intensiv and to eat a skin-friendly diet.
